What We See When We Read
Peter Mendelsund, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804171632
Summary
A gorgeously unique, fully illustrated exploration into the phenomenology of reading—how we visualize images from reading works of literature, from one of our very best book jacket designers, himself a passionate reader.
What do we see when we read? Did Tolstoy really describe Anna Karenina? Did Melville ever really tell us what, exactly, Ishmael looked like?
The collection of fragmented images on a page—a graceful ear there, a stray curl, a hat positioned just so—and other clues and signifiers helps us to create an image of a character. But in fact our sense that we know a character intimately has little to do with our ability to concretely picture our beloved—or reviled—literary figures.
In this remarkable work of nonfiction, Knopf's Associate Art Director Peter Mendelsund combines his profession, as an award-winning designer; his first career, as a classically trained pianist; and his first love, literature—he considers himself first and foremost as a reader—into what is sure to be one of the most provocative and unusual investigations into how we understand the act of reading. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1969-70 (?)
• Where—Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
In his words:
The arts always played a large role in my family—my father was an architect-turned-sculptor, and my sister was a painter. I always thought (and still suspect that) I was the one in the family who lacked visual aptitude—We’d go to museums together (incidentally, my mother works at the Metropolitan Museum) and I’d wonder what all the fuss was about.
I think my dad considered me a lost cause in the visual-department as well, because he shackled me to the piano when I was five and I’ve been playing ever since. I went to Columbia U. and was a Philosophy major, though I spent most of my time playing the piano. After College, I got various useless graduate degrees in music from various conservatories, then performed, taught, and wrote classical music for a spell.
The following week, I was working here; first at Vintage, eight months after that, Knopf hardcovers. Improbably, the entire process from music to design took less than a year. I count my lucky stars that John and Carol were up for a gamble. (Excerpted from designrelated.com.)
View Mendelsund's archive at Book Cover.
Book Reviews
[Mendelsund] has a wide range of reference…and he quotes with care…Mr. Mendelsund is an adept memoirist…He can be a canny close reader…The best critics and philosophers slide, necessarily, to and fro on the scale from butterfly to pedant. To his credit, Mr. Mendelsund keeps his tone light while thinking deliberately about fundamental things.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
A playful, illustrated treatise on how words give rise to mental images.... Mendelsund argues that reading is an act of co-creation, and that our impressions of characters and places owe as much to our own memory and experience as to the descriptive powers of authors.... [What We See When We Read] explore[s] the peculiar challenges of transforming words into images, and blend[s] illustrations with philosophy, literary criticism and design theory.
Alexandra Alter - New York Times Book Review
Mendelsund, throughout this thought-provoking book, helps the lay reader contemplate text in ways you hadn’t thought about previously.
Los Angeles Times
A conversation piece, created to entice repeated thumb-throughs.... [The author is] a highly regarded book-jacket designer.... Reading is often considered (especially by those who don’t love to do it) a passive activity. But Cambridge native Mendelsund...makes a nice case that it is, in fact, a kind of active collaboration.... What We See When We Read, itself a work of conceptual design, unfolds the author’s ideas about what makes reading a creative, visual act all its own on pages—some packed with text, others just a line or two—that incorporate sketches, clip art, images of classic book covers and more.
Boston Globe
The liveliest, most entertaining and best illustrated work of phenomenology you'll pick up this year. An acclaimed book-jacket designer and art director, Mendelsund investigates, through words and pictures, what we see when we read text and where those images come from. His breakdown of the reading and visualizing processes yields many insights.... Playfully, he offers us a police composite sketch of Anna, based on the description in Tolstoy's novel.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Mendelsund has creatively combined nuggets of philosophy, the notion of the "reader," and art to expand playful, abstract ideas on what readers process to produce the multitude of feelings and meanings within a reading experience.... This work was written for those who enjoy fully the creative experience of reading, and who read about reading. —Jesse A. Lambertson, Metamedia Management, LLC, Washington, DC
Library Journal
Offhandedly brilliant, witty, and fluent in the works of Tolstoy, Melville, Joyce, and Woolf, Mendelsund guides us through an intricate and enlivening analysis of why literature and reading are essential to our understanding of ourselves, each other, and the spinning world.
Booklist
(Starred review.) In this brilliant amalgam of philosophy, psychology, literary theory and visual art...Mendelsund inquires about the complex process of reading.... In 19 brief, zesty chapters, the author considers such topics as the relationship of reading to time, skill, visual acuity, fantasy, synesthesia and belief.... Mendelsund amply attains his goal to produce a quirky, fresh and altogether delightful meditation on the miraculous act of reading.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)