Why Read? Charles Dantzig’s Answer Begins With Pleasure

When I want to know something, I reach for my phone. A search, an article or a question to an AI system can get me to a likely answer quickly. I was curious what Charles Dantzig wanted to ask when he chose the title Pourquoi lire ?

Short Essays With a Large Question on the Cover

I expected a philosophical treatise. What I found was a set of short essays about books, sentences and writing, drawn from the author’s own reading. Some of his examples are French writers I had not read. At times I lost the thread of an allusion. I also left with more writers I wanted to look up.

Why I Keep Reading

The simplest answer for me is pleasure. A book also gives me time to think without having to arrive at an answer quickly. I read a passage, see what it calls to mind and sometimes return to it with a different question. Doing that regularly has changed the way I notice what other people write and the way I try to write myself.

A Selfish Beginning

Dantzig proposes that reading can start in self-interest and leave a reader with a greater concern for other people. I recognized the first half immediately. I might pick up a book because I want to enjoy myself or because I hope to learn something. For a while, I have to attend to somebody else’s sentences and what they saw. That is where the second half begins to make sense.

The title looked heavier than the book turned out to be. I was able to read a few pages at a time and go back to the question with my own examples.