John Dermot Woods, On Reading

"I read to disrupt myself. The more I read, the less sure I am that I get it. That's the healthiest thing I can imagine. But we're wired to abide by systems, and systems are often what save and maintain us. There's something about the rapture of reading that allows the system to fall apart, or at least allows us to see the system, and thereby dismantle it. Reading moves me very far from the comfortable world that I know and largely control."


{John Dermot Woods is the author of the novel The Complete Collection of people, places & things. He writes stories and draws comics in Brooklyn, NY. He edits the arts quarterly Action,Yes and organizes the online reading series Apostrophe Cast. He is a professor in the English Department at Nassau Community College on Long Island. For more information, visit his website here.}