Literature is a means by which we know ourselves. By it we meet 【M1】______
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
self 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 【M2】______
and independent nature of human society. The act of reading the book marks 【M3】______
both our difference in and our place in the human fabric. The more we read,【M4】______
the more we are. In the act of reading silently we are alone from the book,【M5】______
separate from one's own immediate surroundings. Yet in the act of reading 【M6】______
we enter other minds and other places, enlarge our dialogue with the world.【M7】______
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 【M8】______
engaged in reading. All kinds of present physical discomfort ness may be 【M9】______
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【M10】______
from self and an expansion of self.
【M1】