Friendship, friendship in respect of individuals, is no doubt a frivolous thing, and reading is a form of friendship. But at least it is a sincere form, and the fact that it is directed at someone who is dead, who is not there, lends something disinterested, almost moving to it. It is a form of friendship freed moreover from all that makes other forms ugly.
--Marcel Proust, On Reading
On Reading is a charming little essay that Proust wrote as an introduction to his translation of John Ruskin's
Sesame and Lilies. It is remarkable in that it sets out to cut reading down to size, but still manages to make it look so damn appealing in the process. To sum up his argument: no, books are not your intellectual life, they are at most the nudge that sets that life in motion. They are not the end of the road, they are perhaps not a part of the road at all, but only your desire to walk it. Reading doesn't give you the truth; it gives you the impulse to figure out the truth for itself. It's not a substitute for thinking and, seeing how it's really just a means to an end, one shouldn't fetishize it. I happen to agree with all of this, but, at the same time, I admit one is hard pressed not to slip into "reading is the best thing since sliced bread" mode, when faced with paragraphs like the one I quoted above. Luckily, that paragraph is wrong.
