Most Readers, Then And Now, Have At

To Say That An Author Is A Reader Or A Reader An Author, To See A Book As A Human Being Or A Human Being A Book, To Describe The World As Text Or A Text As The World, Are Ways Of Naming The Readers Craft.

The Stories That Unfold In The Space Of A Writer's Study, The Objects Chosen To Watch Over A Desk, The Books Selected To Sit On The Shelves, All Weave A Web Of Echoes And Reflections Of Meanings And Affections, That Lend A Visitor The Illusion That Something Of The Owner Of This Space Lives On Between These Walls, Even If The Owner Is No More.

In Every Literate Society, Learning To Read Is Something Of An Initiation, A Ritualized Passage Out Of A State Of Dependency And Rudimentary Communication.

In My Fool Hardy Youth, When My Friends Were Dreaming Of Heroic Deeds In The Realms Of Engineering And Law, Finance And National Politics, I Dreamt Of Becoming A Librarian.

A Writer Stops Writing The Moment He Or She Puts The Last Full Stop To Their Text, And At That Point The Book Is In Limbo And Doesn't Come To Life Until The Reader Picks It Up And The Reader Flips The Pages.