a mission statement of sorts

Most of you who choose to read this are readers, i imagine. Readers of novels, journals, poetry, short fiction, nonfiction - at least the news, i would hope. So what is it about the written word that drives the reader to devour as much of it as he can? Is it the way the words look on the page, like small black insects crawling across a great white expanse, somehow creating meaning? Is it a voyeuristic desire to possibly catch a glimpse into the author's dark and dirty life? Or maybe it is a manner of escape, to run away to Narnia or Middle Earth or Hogwarts for lack of an ordered world of our own?
Whatever reason each of us chooses, we claim rights to this inheritance that our forebears have left for us. And through our choices for reading material, to what we decide to give our attention in this ADHD time, we leave our own legacy for those to come.

Edmund Wilson said that "no two persons ever read the same book," which strikes me as a remarkable thought on the nature of literature. It would seem that when any of us reads a book, we are reading the same book that so many thousands, even millions, have read before us. But the fact of the matter is that whatever we read, whenever we read, we bring to the table our own personal histories, our views and wishes, prejudices and perversions.

Here, in this particular discussion, I would like to bring to the table what I deduce from various texts, whether they are novels or nonfiction or the news. My experiences and my history shape my understanding of what I read, and this will be my forum for discussion of those ideas.

I request you all to read, digest, and comment. Enjoy!