![]() ![]() ![]() Over the last few years my reading habits have turned into real-life adventures, traveling to writers’ houses across the country and in the U.K., trying to pin down why such places are preserved and beloved. Tolkien after tearing through The Lord of the Rings, and then it was Lewis Carroll biographies in high school. As early as middle school, I remember tracking down a biography of J.R.R. But as a reader, I’ve never been able to shut down my interest in a favorite writer’s life or my interest in the circumstances behind the act of creation of a work I love. Literature students are taught that work should stand on its own, and meaning shouldn’t be extracted outside of a book’s cover. It’s murky territory, if not downright frowned upon, to get too mired in the biography of a writer in an attempt to get closer to a beloved book. Mead’s is a superserious superfan’s quest to understand more about a book and its author but also about how a book can become so personally significant-how or why a reader might desire to find new ways to access a novel she’s already had multiple love affairs with, and whether this type of literary tourism is meaningful or just a form of navel-gazing.Ĭertainly such endeavors aren’t fully embraced by the literary establishment. ![]()
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