Literature is a means by which we know ourselves. By it we meet
1. ______ future selves, and recognize past selves; against it we
match our present self. Its primary function is to validate and re-create the
self in all its individuality and distinctness. In doing so, it cements a
sense of relationship between the serf and the otherness of the book, and
allows us a notion of ourselves as sociable. Its shared knowledge is
vicarious experience; by this means we enlarge our understandings of what it
means to be human, of the corporate
2. ______ and independent nature of human society. The
act of reading the book marks
3. ______ both our difference in and our place in the human fabric.
The more we read, 4.
______ the more we are. In the act of reading silently we are alone from the
book, 5.
______ separate from one’s own immediate surroundings. Yet in the act of
reading 6.
______ we enter other minds and other places, enlarge our dialogue with the
world. 7. ______ Thus
paradoxically, while disengaging from the immediate we are increasing its
scope. In silence, reading activates a deeply creative function of
consciousness. We are deeply committed to the narrative which we coexist
while
8. ______ engaged in reading. All kinds of present
physical discomfort ness may be
9. ______ unnoticed while we are reading, and actual time is
replaced by narrative time. To imaginatively enter a fictional world by
reading it is then both a liberation 10.
_____ from self and an expansion of self.