Norman Lock, On Reading

"We read if for no other reason than to be more than we are – to go beyond ourselves, if only a short way; to know, if only in a small way, Others and, finally, ourselves. To read what we already know, therefore, is to confirm ourselves in our confinement, to draw the shade on the wider prospect, to narrow life deliberately as a river is narrowed by the channel that humbles it. To read only what is inscribed in the forms to which our reading has accustomed us is to remain at anchor, on the verge of oceanic experience – tumultuous, dangerous, and thrilling; is to lose the chance to be enraptured or – an equally valuable emotion – terrified by life, as life is made manifest by art. Reading is our consolation for living only one life. Reading is another form of life – comparable in importance and largesse."


{Norman Lock has written novels and short fiction as well as stage, radio and screen plays. He received the 1979 Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review. He is a recipient of fellowships in prose from the New Jersey Council on the Arts and from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts – both for fiction – and, in 2011, for poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. His latest prose works are the novels Shadowplay and The King of Sweden, published by Ellipsis Press and Ravenna Press, respectively, and the short-fiction collection Grim Tales, released this year in a new version by Mud Luscious Press. Norman lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, with his wife, Helen. Visit his website here for more information.}