A Royal Appetite for Books |
| Published: October 9, 2007, 12:30 pm |
| Tags: arts amp amp culture, alan bennett |
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THE UNCOMMON READER By Alan Bennett Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 128 pages, $15 To read is to be slightly ill. And the symptoms only worsen when reading something good. A 19th-century novel, a Bleak House or an Anna Karenina, commits us to its pages with a consumptive fatigue. Moral vitaminists assure us that the habit of contemplative isolation, with its accompanying lowering of vital signs, is somehow salutary, that to read is to be a little more alive. But let's be honest: To read is to be a lot more dead. (In the best sense of the word, of course.) The delights of Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader begin with its title, a gentle but deft play on words, and flow forth in easeful perfection for the 120 pages that follow. (The infallible Mr. Bennett is the Brit responsible for such wonderful imports as Beyond the Fringe, Talking Heads and The History Boys.) The uncommon reader is the queen of England, who, upon following a pair of braying royal corgis outdoors, discovers a large [ Full article ] |
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