03/22/2021
White, a professor of English at the University of Alabama, theorizes in her discerning debut that reading without any particular aim is the surest way to achieve imaginative freedom. “Our reading is best when it is promiscuous,” she writes, and urges that reading should “drift all over the place” as books do. The core of White’s argument unfolds over three chapters that cover the fundamentals of reading promiscuously. In “Play,” White asserts that reading is a game that can deliver a “perennial surprise,” which becomes “the most joyful part.” “Transgression” is an analysis of reading as an act of rebellion and defiance: “To read is to step outside the carefully patrolled boundaries of one’s assigned sphere.” “Insight” offers a look at reading as soul-work, in which readers can move between the worlds of the page, other experiences, and back to reality. Along the way, she offers close readings of Walt Whitman (on the self and other) and Jane Austen (on “social skirmishes”), among others. White’s prose style tends toward the academic, and given the sometimes abstract subject matter, can be difficult follow. Such density, however, doesn’t conceal White’s triumphant conviction that reading should stay “wild.” Literary-minded readers will appreciate this fresh approach. (July)
[Books Promiscuously Read] was so engrossing that I couldn’t put it down, and I think that was actually the point. This is somebody who really just wants to encourage you to enjoy the time that you spend reading . . . This is a book that tells you that your guilty pleasure is actually not guilty.” —Tess Taylor, NPR
"To metacognitively read about the reading process, to double back onto one’s own track, to sniff the air for one’s own scent, can be a heady experience. Cass White grounds us expertly. Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life is a delight to read primarily because it eschews the easy commonplaces of the why you should read genre in order to get at the core of the experience itself." —Ryan Asmussen, Chicago Review of Books
“An elegantly constructed meditation on the vital relation between reading and the everyday self, Books Promiscuously Read animates the experience with wit, brilliance, and affection. A pleasure to read and pass on.” —Vivian Gornick, author of Unfinished Business
“One of the pleasures of reading is the branching-and-branching-and-branching of texts, the way the books you’ve read form an underground network of intentional and unintentional references to each other . . . Heather Cass White’s Books Promiscuously Read describes this joy—and all the joys of reading—as efficiently as I’ve ever seen anyone do. It is a book that I would give someone who has just got bitten by the reading bug and doesn’t quite understand yet what’s happened.” —Phil Christman, Ploughshares
"Books Promiscuously Read sets a high standard for what might become an exciting new genre of literary criticism for educated general readers . . . It rings true." —Allen Michie, Arts Fuse
"'People who like to read should do more of it,' writes Heather Cass White. People who like to read should read more of Heather Cass White. Buoyant, precise, speculative, astute, intermittently wild, this book is proved on the pulse. Somewhere between commonplace book and brilliant guide for the perplexed, between apologia and essai, White’s work shimmers: aphoristic, inviting, provocative. Proposing reading “as a mode of living” and “a species of dreaming,” White salutes the perfectly useless jouissance of readerly absorption; en route she offers fleet, searching, illuminating readings (of Cervantes, George Eliot, Thylias Moss, inter alia). This is seriously deep play." —Maureen N. McLane, author of More Anon
"Discerning . . . Literary-minded readers will appreciate this fresh approach." —Publishers Weekly
06/01/2021
In this work, poetry editor White proposes that reading should be viewed as an experience and should be enjoyed as such. The book is divided into five parts: "Propositions," "Play," "Transgression," "Insight," and "Conclusions." "Propositions" is composed of 22 ideas about reading, taken from widely published works and writers. It flows almost like poetry and draws the reader into the experience of reading, and at the same time informs a perspective of reading. "Play," "Transgression," and "Insight" switch to a more traditional prose format, but still draw heavily on other authors' notions of reading, and use examples from literature to remind us that reading is an experience that shapes perspectives and ideas. In these sections, White cites literary techniques and the consequences of the act of reading, as examples of how books can make us view and experience reading as play, transgression, and insight, and lead to personal growth. She masterfully weaves these techniques and ideas through her own work, making this book as enjoyable as it is informative. VERDICT This book is a good reminder that reading is meant to be enjoyed; it is itself a refreshing, freeing, and inspiring read. Recommended for public libraries.—Sarah Mazur, Noel Memorial Lib., LA
2021-05-12
A book that encourages the reading of other books, preferably with abandon.
In this meditation, White, an English professor who has edited several collections of Marianne Moore’s poetry, urges those inclined toward a literary life to fully embrace that inclination. Devoted readers know how books can expand consciousness, but how many start their days with them? Rather than an activity to engage in after we crawl into bed (if we have the energy), the author suggests an unabashed approach. The problem is that many of us were taught to make reading another task to tackle. “Reading without purpose is playful,” writes White, “and play is not easy for adults.” While it’s correct to infer from the title that the author believes in guilt-free reading trysts, she seems less inclined toward romps with books lowbrow as well as high. Her arguments draw mostly on literary titans, as she quotes frequently from the likes of Emily Dickinson, Don DeLillo, and Don Quixote. Only some of the quotes are attributed in the body of the text. While White makes a note of this structural element, discerning readers may tire of flipping to the back pages. Meanwhile, the language at times strains to be lofty: “Alert, relaxed, keen, and unguarded, the reading self easily occupies an otherwise elusive and fleeting state of awareness in which no answer need be final, no one moment need be decisive. In that fluid medium insight is free to gather and effloresce.” Throughout, White seems less interested in making new readers than emboldening the already well-read. Herein lies its strength, including when the author takes up counterarguments. For example, reading has downsides—when we outsourced our memory onto the pages of books, we began to remember stories less vividly—and it’s not for everyone. Yes, everyone deserves the right to literacy, but not all souls hunger for Middlemarch. So don’t look down your noses at nonreaders.
A mixed bag that will end up in the book sacks of the literature-inclined—not unintentionally.
