Reading and Writing are Done in Silence

       Watching a program tonight with Connie, The Fifty Year Argument, about The New York Review of Books magazine.

       Connie and I were both in New York City when it began during our first year or so there; it was born during a newspaper strike!

       One statement made during the program I knew I wanted to quote in its entirety for the blog:

       
        Reading and writing are done in silence.  But you must have the idea that other people are reading the books you're reading, and that other people will read the novel you're writing.  And the idea of community within a world which depends on silence is so fundamental, although we don't think about it or remember enough how important it's been, if we don't join forces as readers in some strange way (also inside), our reading becomes a strange dessicated Mr. Casaubon sort of activity forever about to produce a book that, you know, nobody will read.

              Colm Toibin, a contributor to The New York Review of Books