Siri Hustvedt, in this year’s issue of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art (No. 49), has written an excellent piece on reading and, most importantly, remembering literature.¹ From her observation that “[v]arious texts call for different [reading] strategies” (122), to the fact that we as readers often unconsciously imagine things in literary works that are not even to be found in the text itself (124), Hustvedt is spot-on.

I especially liked her example of a literary text coming to life in the reader’s mind (and, if it’s a good work, staying there):

I have vivid memories of some books that last in my consciousness. Novels often take pictorial form in my recollection; I see Emma Bovary running down a grassy hill on her way to the chemist’s shop, her cheeks flushed, her hair loosened by the wind. The grass, the cheeks, the hair, the wind are not in the text. I provided them. (122)