| chapter heading I sensed that here I would find what I wanted: "Man moulded by custom, not instinct"; "All standards of behavior relative"; "Peoples who never heard of war"; "Death, the paramount affront.'' Irresistible. I read, there and elsewhere, and when the design was clear to me, I stopped. |
| We may read for facts alone: the eye skims along, alert for key words, and when they appear, like red lights on a highway, it slides deftly to a halt. That kind of reading propelled me out of graduate school. However useful, it does not feel like true reading but more like shopping, riffling through racks for the precise shade of blue. I would have made a poor and ludicrous scholar, like a diva singing ditties in TV commercials, or a pastry chef condemned to macrobiotic menus. |
| My addiction is to works of the imagination, and even if I became a Buddhist, I think I couldn't renounce them cold turkey. Not after a lifetime, the better part of which was spent reading. Was it actually the better part, though? Did I choose or was I chosen, shepherded into it like those children caught out early on with a talent for the violin or ballet, baseball or gymnastics, and tethered forever to bows and barres, bats and mats? We didn't know any alternatives; there was no chance to find them out. Reading, of all these, does not win huge sums of money or applause, or give joy and solace to others. What it does offer is a delectable exercise for the mind, and Mr. Cha, the Buddhist scholar, might well find it an indulgence. Like the bodies of dancers or athletes, the minds of readers are genuinely happy and self-possessed only when cavorting around, doing their stretches and leaps and jumps to the tune of words. |
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