The Saunterer

Arnold Weinstein on the benefit of reading

    We put away our idea of the benefit of reading when we saw Arnold Weinstein’s. His, we’d wager, tops all others:

    Reading books means converting the print into meaning. We make such conversions all the time, responding to a green traffic light, a smile, or a cholesterol count.
    Converting the print on the page into its fuller meaning is an extraordinarily gratifying, pleasurable, even hedonistic exercise.
    Art is the bloodstream of civilization, and reading is like a blood transfusion, in which the reality of the world of past writers - their imaginations, their hearts, and their brains - becomes available to us. We become citizens of the world - we begin the world - by reading books.

    (Quoted from page 187 of the course guidebook to Classic Novels: Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature, by Arnold Weinstein. The Teaching Company, 2007.)
    For a brief biography of Arnold Weinstein, click here. For a list of his courses for The Teaching Company, click here.

Leslie Marmon Silko on the value of stories

    If you believe stories are a treasure, you can quote Leslie Marmon Silko on your side:

I will tell you something about stories . . .
   They aren’t just entertainment.
       Don’t be fooled.
      They are all we have, you see,
   All we have to fight off illness and death.
You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.

    (Quoted from the front matter of Dreams Deferred: Dropping Out and Struggling Forward, by Chris Liska Carger. Information Age Publishing, Inc., 2009.)
    For Leslie Marmon Silko’s home page, click here. For images of and relating to Leslie Marmon Silko, click here. For Chris Liska Carger’s home page, click here.