rereading a book can often be a more significant, dramatic, and, yes, new experience than encountering an unfamiliar work.

Fitzgerald’s tender recollection of being “approved of by everyone” may be found in her essay “Why I Write,” which is included in the collection of her occasional prose A House of Air (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009 [2003]).

Sir Francis Bacon—it comes from his essay “Of Studies”—concerns the reading of books: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

“For the reader there are three lessons taught by humility that are particularly important: First, that he hold no knowledge or writing whatsoever in contempt. Second, that he not blush to learn from any man. Third, that when he has attained learning himself, he not look down upon anyone else.”

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African was published in 1789

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And so, belatedly, haltingly, accidentally, and quite implausibly and incredibly, it began at last: my education. I wasn’t sure what it would get me, whose approval it might win, or how long it might take to complete (forever, I had an inkling), but for once those weren’t my first concerns. Alone in my room, congested and exhausted, I forgot my

CommentPress allows readers to comment on a whole book, on a chapter of that book, on a paragraph in that chapter, and, of course, on other comments. It requires a little more thought to participate in a CommentPress conversation than to fire off a reply to a blog post, but that’s probably a good thing: the time it takes to think about whether what

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