To be human is to read. We read faces as we try to determine what people are thinking; we read between the lines as we try to determine what people are saying; we read situations and our physical surroundings as we try to understand where we are; we read the progress of experiments as we seek to understand the natural world. And we read ourselves sifting through memories and experiences that won’t let us go.

The late critic Harold Bloom was convinced that reading complex, exciting literature—the kind that baffles us, surprises us, rejects us, and, ultimately, enlightens us—opens the door to considering who we are. In his own words, “Aesthetic value emanates from the struggle between texts: in the reader, in language, in the classroom, in arguments within a society. Aesthetic value rises out of memory, and so (as Nietzsche saw) out of pain, the pain of surrendering easier pleasures in favour of much more difficult ones ... successful literary works are achieved anxieties, not releases from anxieties.” I tend to agree.

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