“My Reading Life”

Abstract

In this article, I outline the academic life of reading, what it demands, and what it has become for too many—an evasion of thinking. I discuss the crisis that the evasion of reading has caused and how the contemporary university has promoted this crisis. I rely on established critics of reading and academic work (J. Hillis Miller and Isabella Stengers) to think myself out of this crisis and to maintain high standards for living an intellectual life. Further, I discuss the habits I built to construct an intellectual life of solitude centered in reading.