Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and RememberingA New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year: A look at the pleasures and surprises of rereading. Compared with reading, the act of rereading is far more personal—it involves a complex interaction of our past selves, our present selves, and literature. With candor and humor, this “inspired intellectual romp, part memoir, part criticism” takes us on a guided tour of the author’s own return to books she once knew—from the plays of Shakespeare to twentieth-century novels by Kingsley Amis and Ian McEwan, from the childhood favorite I Capture the Castle to classic novels such as Anna Karenina and Huckleberry Finn, from nonfiction by Henry Adams to poetry by Wordsworth—as she reflects on how the passage of time and the experience of aging has affected her perceptions of them (Lawrence Weschler). A cultural critic and the acclaimed author of Why I Read, Wendy Lesser conveys an infectious love of reading and inspires us all to take another look at the books we’ve read to find the unexpected treasures they might offer. “Delightful.” —Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce “Anyone who has ever approached a once favorite book later in life . . . will find in this memoir moments of bittersweet recognition.” —The New York Times Book Review “Reflect[s] deeply and candidly on how a reader’s life experiences alter her perceptions of literature . . . [Lesser] has truly fascinating and original things to say about a compelling assortment of writers, including George Orwell, George Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Dostoyevsky, and Shakespeare.” —Booklist |
From inside the book
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... become part of the answer to our curiosity when our curiosity had the freshness of youth, these particular agents exist for us, with the lapse of time, as the substance itself of knowledge: they have been intellectually so swallowed ...
... become part of the answer to our curiosity when our curiosity had the freshness of youth, these particular agents exist for us, with the lapse of time, as the substance itself of knowledge: they have been intellectually so swallowed ...
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... become our collective daily life. Like many others before me (including, I noted wryly, Henry James), I felt menaced by too-sudden change, as if something I held dear were about to be taken away from me, or perhaps had already been ...
... become our collective daily life. Like many others before me (including, I noted wryly, Henry James), I felt menaced by too-sudden change, as if something I held dear were about to be taken away from me, or perhaps had already been ...
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... become its author anew. It was also done by the very real William Dean Howells, who wrote in a 1919 issue of Harper's Magazine, five months before his death, that "within my eighty-second year I have read Don Quixote with as much zest ...
... become its author anew. It was also done by the very real William Dean Howells, who wrote in a 1919 issue of Harper's Magazine, five months before his death, that "within my eighty-second year I have read Don Quixote with as much zest ...
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... becomes noticeably darker. The story of Claudia is bracketed by two incidents that, while they occupy the background, nonetheless color the whole atmosphere. In the first, Sancho Panza is standing in the woods when he feels something ...
... becomes noticeably darker. The story of Claudia is bracketed by two incidents that, while they occupy the background, nonetheless color the whole atmosphere. In the first, Sancho Panza is standing in the woods when he feels something ...
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... becomes more and more cut off from everything that had previously been her life. Is she the one who is crazy, or does the fault lie with her world? The answer to such questions, in the most truthful works of fiction, is never as simple ...
... becomes more and more cut off from everything that had previously been her life. Is she the one who is crazy, or does the fault lie with her world? The answer to such questions, in the most truthful works of fiction, is never as simple ...
Contents
An Education | |
A Young Womans Mistakes | |
All Kinds of Madness | |
A Small Masterpiece | |
The Tree of Knowledge | |
McEwan inTime | |
The Strange Case of Huck and Jim | |
A Literary Career | |
Hitchcocks Vertigo | |
Back Matter | |
Back Cover | |
Spine | |
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Common terms and phrases
actors actually Adams's Aglaya Anna Anna Karenina become believe called Capture the Castle Casaubon Cervantes chapter character child childhood comes criticism Don Quixote Dorothea Dostoyevsky dream essay exactly experience fact feel felt fiction fool garden George Eliot George Orwell Henry Adams Henry James Hermione Howells Huck Huckleberry Finn humor husband idea idiot imagine instance Jenny Diski kind knew Lawrence Leontes literary live look Lucky Jim Madeleine McEwan mean memory ment Middlemarch Milton mother movie Myshkin narrator Nastasya never novel once Orwell Orwell's Paradise Lost perhaps person play pleasure plot poem prince Prospero readers remember rereading Road to Wigan Rocking-Horse Rocking-Horse Winner Sancho Panza scene Scotty seems sense Shakespeare sort story strange tell Tempest things thought tion true turn Vertigo WENDY LESSER Wigan Pier woman word Wordsworth writing