"So it's surely no coincidence that my passion for literary fiction began, somewhere in my early teens, with the dawning realization that I was a flawed creature, no longer the golden hero of my childhood dreams. With my own heart already beating at cross-purposes, I read to have my emerging view of the world, and my shaky place in it, validated. Peers and parents seemed to take a dim view of this interest: “Always with your head in a book. You're anti-social.” Actually, I was trying to be pro-social; I was reading to feel less weird, to see my anxieties reflected in other “characters,” to enjoy that delicious “shock of recognition.” Even then, the paradox seemed clear: Reading is a solitary activity that makes me feel less alone. I wasn't escaping from life, but escaping into life, or into a sense of it that more truly echoed my own"
Amen to that !
1 comment:
wow! that is so true. like someone with a thick novel and with thick framed glasses, people do have that stereotype in the mind that such individuals are anti social but we know that we are fully immersed in another world of the characters that we are reading about.
that extract you quoted, reflects so much of what happens in reality.
:)
Post a Comment