“Great little book. On loving books: " The Fadiman family believed in carnal love. To us, a book's WORDS were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy." (38) On proofreading: " Of course, if you are a compulsive proofreader yourself--and if you are, you know it, since for the afflicted it is a reflex no more avoidable than a sneeze...." (82) descriptive food writing: "in the famous eating scene in TOM JONES, ... his appetite for his dinner, during which 'three pounds at least of that flesh which formerly had contributed to the composition of an ox, was now honoured with becoming part of the individual Mr. Jones.'" (97) Reading out loud: "When Charles Dickens read aloud from OLIVER TWIST to a full house at St. James's Hall, his heart rate shot up from 72 to 124, and no wonder. First he became Fagin. His friend Charles Kent, who watched from the wings, said that for several minutes Dickens resembled 'the very devil incarnate: his features distorted with rage, his penthouse eyebrows ... working like the antennae of some deadly reptile, his whole aspect, half-vulpine, half-vulture-like, in its hungry wickedness.' Then, after glancing at the stage directions he had written in the margins ('Shudder ... Look Round with Terror ... Murder coming'), Dickens became Bill Sikes, wielding an invisible club. Finally, he became Nancy, gasping, "Bill, dear Bill!" as she sank to the floor, blinded by her own blood. After bludgeoning Nancy and hanging Sikes, Dickens prostrated himself on a sofa offstage, unable to speak in consecutive sentences for a full ten minutes." (131) When you read aloud, the performance is collaborative. One partner provides the words, the other the rhythm. No stage is required, no rehearsal, not even an audience. When he was a boy, Heine read DON QUIXOTE to the trees and flowers in the Palace Garden of Dusseldorf. Lamb believed that it was criminal to read Shakespeare and Milton silently, even if no one was there to listen." (133)”
Libby H wrote this review Wednesday, June 18 2008.
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