Paper: - ​English Literature V:

Literary Theory and Practical Criticism.

Project on: - ​The Prologue: “Why I Read: The Serious

Pleasure of Books” by Wendy Lesser.

Project by: -

Prutha Bhatt – 03

Priyam Dave – 06

Kajal Kamath – 12

Yesha Kapadia – 13

Haarshita Lalwani – 16
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Index

Sr. no. Table of Contents Page no.

1. Introduction: About the Author 2
2. Summary of “Why I Read” 4
3. Analysis of the Prologue 6
4. Intertextuality 11
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Introduction: About the Author

For writers, literature is a talent show: Those with the most talent win. Readers are

more fortunate: Everybody wins. Quality reading exercises the crucial dialogue with yourself,

the dialogue you must undergo to become yourself, to know where on the vista of existence

you can place your own identity and awareness. The salient word, of course, is “quality”

reading. In his indispensable “Lectures on Russian Literature,” Vladimir Nabokov, with

typical Nabokovian acuity, chided those pedants “who talk about books instead of talking

within books.” That might appear a distinction without much difference, but Wendy Lesser’s

lovely “Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books” demonstrates the chasm between

Nabokov’s two prepositions. An intellectual of unflinching dignity and gravitas, Wendy

Lesser talks within books as few now are able to do.

Lesser was born in 1952 in Santa Monica, California and moved in 1955 to Palo Alto,

California, where she was raised. She is the daughter of Murray Lesser, an engineer and

writer, and Millicent Dillon, a writer. She earned a B.A. at Harvard University in 1973; a

B.Phil. at King's College, Cambridge, in 1975; and a Ph.D. at the University of California,

Berkeley, in 1982.

She is the author of nine books, including a novel, “The Pagoda in the Garden” (Other

Press, 2005), and the nonfiction book “Why I Read”, published in 2014. She is the founding

editor of the literary magazine the Threepenny Review. It prints fiction, poetry, and criticism

by the likes of Wendell Berry, Javier Marias, and Robert Pinsky. Wendy Lesser’s reviews

and essays have appeared in major newspapers and magazines.

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She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received

fellowships awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the

Humanities, and New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, as

well as the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award for Criticism from the American Academy of Arts

& Letters.
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Summary of “Why I Read”

A love of reading often comes despite the culture we live in — in its most pleasurable

form, reading is an act of leisure in a society that frowns upon leisure as laziness. The

response to this has been to turn reading into a sort of job, and as early as we learn the

alphabet we are conditioned to believe that it is more valuable to approach it as work, even as

competition. All through our education, books are “assigned texts,” tomes we are told to

consume and report on in order to “pass.” So rarely are we encouraged to enjoy the act, to

languish in its pleasures, to do it for its own sake. “Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of

Books” is Wendy Lesser’s homage to a life of reading that not only helps to find more

enjoyment in reading, but also tries to shake off the ingrained obligation of the thing and

instead approach it as an act of spending time with and taking care of oneself.

In her prologue, Lesser plainly states that when it comes to reading, it is difficult to

easily respond to the question of “why,” and then gracefully takes us on a tour through

literature and its mechanisms to find an answer. She also talks about how delightful reading

has made her believe that rewards exist but they are either intangible or inexpressible, which

is why people compulsively aim to mark them with grades, gold stars or yearly counts.

Through the following chapters, each broadly devoted to a particular literary

technique or theme, Lesser examines a variety of forms, whether it be a play or poem, essay

or novel. She deftly explores the canon and its outliers, touching on science fiction, mystery,

memoir and of course more traditionally lauded works of capital-L literature. In her chapters

she has made artful parallels between nonfiction and poetry, forms that seem so divorced

from each other yet in Lesser’s skilful critical mind belong together.
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While Lesser’s principle aim is to illuminate reading’s innumerable pleasures, she is

thankfully not always kind to her subject matter, lest the book become a tedious, gleeful

celebration of the merits of the written word. Lesser reminds us that reading is much more

valuable if taken as an act that needs to be examined as worthy of our time. Like anything

that holds the promise to better us, it is too valuable, has too much potential for deep

satisfaction, to approach as a given, something one is “supposed” to do.

“Why I Read” is a process of unlearning that lifelong rigid expectations, it not only

does it provide a diverse and fascinating book list to delve into in the coming year but it also

gracefully demands the reader examine the point of the exercise, and allows them to find their

own reasons for engaging in the intimacy of the act.

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Analysis of the Prologue

Wendy Lesser’s extraordinary alertness, intelligence and curiosity has made her one

of America's most significant cultural writer and critic. Her novel “Why I Read: The Serious

Pleasure of Books” is very famous because she talks about a lifetime of reading and the

different types of pleasure people get from it. In her Prologue, she states that she cannot

answer the question about why she reads as she has many reasons for it. Some being

understandable and others being very contradictory of each other. To pass the time. To savour

the existence of time. To escape from myself into someone else’s world. To find myself in

someone else’s words. To exercise my critical capacities. To flee from the need for rational

explanations. Her motivation to read is obscure even to herself, calling it - ‘A compulsion’.

She further clarifies her question saying that when she asks why she reads to herself

she is not looking for any type of motivation that makes her read but the delight that she gets

from it. The reward that she is or will get in the coming years. And those are the ones which

are inexpressible and intangible to her. She has tried to express this to the best of her abilities.

She says that when it comes to literature everyone is groping blindly in dark including the

writer which is a good thing. Every reading of the text will be different from the last time - A

book will always manage to surprise you in some or the other way. According to her to

discover a new writer is like a discovery of a whole new country. Some being bigger than the

other. Like the novels of Nathanael West or J. G. Farrell or E. M. Forster, are only the size of

a small island, because their author died young or dried up early. Others, like the novels of

Anthony Trollope or Émile Zola, seem to cover a whole continent, requiring years just to

map out and superficially explore. One place might be appealing to one person while the
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other may not think the same. It all depends upon the preference. And the reader can choose

whatever they like from this abundant source.

In one word, reading is all about the pleasure to her. It is the kind of pleasure which is

unlike any other pleasures in the world. Many get pleasure from reading bad books too.

However, it again depends on the tastes and preferences of the people. She describes reading

as an individual act. No two people's experience of pleasure will be the same. Reading can

result in boredom or transcendence, rage or enthusiasm, depression or hilarity, empathy or

contempt. Depending on who the person is, what the book is about and at which period of

time did they read it. And the effect of the book will be unique to each reader and will keep

on changing with each reading.

She has tried in this book, to cast a wide net in the definition of literature, looking at

plays, poems, and essays as well as novels and stories. Along with more traditional literary

forms, she has included mysteries and science fiction, memoirs and journalism, the only

requirement being that the book be well-written enough to last through multiple readings, not

to mention multiple generations of readers. She calls literature a time machine which can take

the reader anywhere they want to go and tell them whatever they need/want to know.

Everything she knows about nineteenth-century England, nineteenth-century Russia,

late-nineteenth-century France, and twentieth-century India comes out of these novels. They

have become so unparalleled in her mind that even the superimposed reality pales in its

comparison.

Austen’s Bath is more present to her than the tourist-laden city that she has actually

visited. She will never experience Bombay from the viewpoint of its slums, as Rohinton

Mistry allows her to do; she will never feel at home in the actual Paris the way she does in the

Paris of Balzac, Zola, or Proust. And even certain parts of America—William Faulkner’s
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South, Willa Cather’s Southwest, Ross Macdonald’s Southern California—are more familiar

to her in their literary form than they are as geographical entities that she has or might set foot

in. She says that she is not retreat from the reality no more than any television viewer or

newspaper reader. Everyone lives most of their lives at remove. People must not blame the

technology instead they should embrace as it is. Lesser says that she too lives in this world

through the medium of literature. And that is exactly what she is hoping to transmit—that

sense of connection with something other than oneself and one’s friends and one’s life in this

time. Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and

different. It can give us the feeling that we belong to the past as well as the present, and it can

help us realize that our present will someday be someone else’s past. And while this may be

disheartening, but it can also be strangely consoling at times too.

In the second half of the prologue, she goes on to talk about how the experience of

reading can be compared to a conversation. According to her, a conversation cannot be

limited to anyone's perception of the concept. For instance, a conversation does not need to

have two people speaking to each other in the same room, nor does it need rapidly tweeted

responses. Some of her most memorable conversations have occured in mute communion

with absent authors. According to her, silence speaks volumes and is conducive to response.

The contents of the book often causes the mind to race with multiple thoughts, a feeling

which many active forms of communication may not provide.

It bothers us if we don't get the desired response and further agitates us if we don't

receive one at all. However, Lesser states that the absent writers cannot hear her reactions to

their work, but that doesn’t bother either of them. The authors seem to have anticipated her

thoughts so brilliantly that she feels welcomed into the conversation even when she is saying

nothing.
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Even the readers of this book are bringing something to the conversation - our

attention, our memories, our interpretations of what she is saying, our reflections and so on.

The conversation continues for as long as you are reading the book, and possibly after.

In her previous books, she never consciously thought about audience. She would just

write for herself and presume that there are others like her or leave it up to the marketing

department. However this time, she does wonder who her audience is. Whether it's a young or

older person, coming from any background , she hopes her audiences do come from multiple

spheres of life. Lesser asserts the idea of truth. While judging literature, this question of

whether a writer is telling me the truth or not often arises. Her use of the term is not arbitrary,

but it is elusive, and she encourages the process of truth-defining to be cumulative rather than

absolute. As it seems like the only way things can work in literature.

Lesser attempts to make the text extremely conversational. Clarity is a great virtue.

But sometimes things cannot be made clear instantly,and there are times when a form of

heightened concentration may be required. This is one of the favors literature, it teaches us

the pleasures of close attention. There are many questions which come to mind while reading

a text. Questions about the nature of suspense - why do we feel it even when we know what

will happen; questions about our connection to specific characters, as well as questions about

belief, doubt, historically true, and the fictionally imagined. She attempts to provide answers

to all these questions , and she believes we all possess a similar set of questions.

She concludes by expressing her thoughts of the shape of her text and its contents.

The shape of the book is something like a spiral, in which each new chapter represents a new

level of the spiral, so we know we are getting somewhere; and yet we are always circling

around the same elongated core, greeting now-familiar works as we pass by them once again.
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There is repetition, but each time the repeated material is seen from a different view. Yet

once it is finished, the structure will seem to have arrived at its only possible shape, so that

there will be some sense of completion, even in its open-endedness.

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Intertextuality

❖ The Pleasure of Reading by Antonia Frese :

The Pleasure of Reading is not only about the pleasures gained from literature, it is

also in itself a pleasure to read. The pleasure of reading is the most sophisticated and

erudite result of this fascination for listography, since its premise is straightforwardly

based around the top ten books chosen by famous authors. Behind this book is the

curiosity readers feel for each other or the question, as Fraser puts it, “What do other

people read?” But these people are some of the greatest writers working in recent

years, with contributions from Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, and Tom Stoppard

and others. However, it returns us to those early moments in their lives before fame

and prizes. when reading was a hobby like it is for so many people. The book consists

of 43 sections written by some of the most popular novelists, playwrights, and poets

in contemporary Anglophone literature, each speaking about their relationships with

reading, their childhood favourites, and the books they return to over and over again.

❖ The Pleasure of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacob

A lot of people think that reading, especially critical reading, is on the decline. The

thinking goes that we spend too much time distracted on devices. Author Alan Jacob

argues that not only is reading alive and well in America, but we suffer from

confidence issues: we wonder whether we read well, with proper focus and

attentiveness, and with genuine discernment. Jacobs’ message is simple. “Read what

gives you delight, and do so without shame, whether it be Stephen King or the King

James Version of the Bible.”

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And even if you are that rare sort of person who is delighted chiefly by what some

people call the Great Books, do not make them your steady intellectual diet, any more

than you would eat at the most elegant restaurants every day. It would be too much.

Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers: they are not

readily encountered, easily assessed.

The poet W. H. Auden once wrote, “When one thinks of the attention that a great poem

demands, there is something frivolous about the notion of spending every day with one.

Masterpieces should be kept for High Holidays of the Spirit—for our own personal

Christmases and Easters, not for any old Wednesday.”