The ideal reader is guiltlessly whimsical.

I always knew that I wanted to live with books, even as a child because we traveled a lot. Home was the book to which I came back every evening. I remember as a small child feeling secure in the fact that I opened my story book and there on the same page was the same text with the same illustration. That gave me a sense of reassurance that the world did not give me. And that developed into a love of collecting books. Eventually as an adolescent, I met Jorge Luis Borges, the blind Argentinean writer. I was working in a book store and he would come and buy books there and asked me one day to come and read to him. And that was an extraordinary experience, because reading to Borges as an adolescent, what happened was that I became the silent witness of his own reading because he would comment on what we would read. That was an extraordinary learning experience, and also the experience of how generous reading can be, that if you don’t follow official guidelines, if you don’t believe in the histories of literature that are taught and the official chronologies, your mind as a reader is free to associate — well, as Borges did, Agatha Christie with Plato and draw your own conclusions.

ALBERTO MANGUEL in conversation with Jeffrey Brown, PBS Newshour, 19 February 2010.

Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Reader

Photo: Well Read