A man listening to a story is in the company of the storyteller; even a man reading one shares this companionship. The reader of a novel, however, is isolated, more so than any other reader(For even the reader of a poem is ready to utter the words, for the benet of the listener.) In this solitude of his, the reader ofa novel seizes upon his material more jealously than anyone else. He is ready to make it completely his own, to devour it, as it were. Indeed, he destroys, he swallows up the material as the re devours logs in the replace. The suspense which permeates the novel isvery much like the draft which stimulates the ame in the replace and enlivens its play.
Walter BenjaminAbout author
- Author's profession: Critic, Philosopher
- Nationality: deutsch
- Born: July 15, 1892
- Died: September 27, 1940
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Glen used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar.
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