[Saturday Reads] Proust and the Provocations of the Written Word

Myra here.

Every Saturday we hope to share with you our thoughts on reading and books. We thought that it would be good practice to reflect on our reading lives and our thoughts about reading in general. While on occasion, we would feature a few books in keeping with this, there would be a few posts where we will just write about our thoughts on read-alouds, libraries, reading journals, upcoming literary conferences, books that we are excited about, and just booklove miscellany in general.

My journey as a reader and as an academic has seamlessly brought me to reading about reading. There is nothing that energizes me more than this. As I was going through this lovely book (on occasion difficult, but largely pleasurable), there are several key points that I highlighted because I wanted to share them with you fellow bibliophiles and wanted to know what you think about it. Next week, I shall share a few by Ruskin. But for now, here are a few by Marcel Proust:

One of my research studies involve looking into a few teachers’ literary autobiographies, which also prompted me to reflect on mine. Reading this passage reminded me of childhood reading and its sorcery. Adrienne Gear of ReadingPowerGear has written a lovely post about this as she revisited her childhood friends in her Monday reading.

I especially loved the lines about Provocations: “We can feel that our wisdom begins where the author’s ends, and we want him to give us answers when all he can do is give us desires.” and the last few words: “Bring us with you.”

How about you, dear friends, what is your literary autobiography like? What are some of your childhood reading companions? What are some of the provocations of the written word that you simply could not resist?