The Uncommon Reader

Yesterday's guilty pleasure was THE UNCOMMON READER, Alan Bennett's totally fine new novella that wonders what would happen if the queen of England suddenly morphed into an avid reader. Fabulous premise, telling lesson in how ideas can in fact advance plot, how apparent contradictions do indeed broaden understanding, how vocabulary pitched to just the right high can aerate the reading experience (words for the book of words: glabrous, divigation, opsimath). Reading is both passive and a muscle to be developed. Writers are equally brave and mewling. Reading is not for "doers" and yet, reading "tenderises," alters perspective, catalyzes new forms of doing. Bennett has a field day best and worsting the entire lit scene, but cruelty doesn't enter in, only astute observation.

Myopia, self-absorption, grandstanding, melodrama: It can all get the best of us writers. Reader talk, writer talk: Yes, you're right, it grows incestuous, can send my husband (the most happily determined non-reader I know) straight across the room—a cannon shot.

But everytime we write, and everytime we read, and everytime we're out there talking about reading, talking about writing, we are defining what literature is and what it means. We are being given the chance (we are taking the chance) to torque, twist, blue sky it, toward that thing that we want to be part of.