Reading and the Zerg
Excerpt from “Why Knot?” Buy the book at Amazon
In the Starcraft game series, the Zerg are one of the races struggling for dominance. While there are many Zerg, they act together, more or less, as a single entity, a single horde or hive. When they capture an opponent, they assimilate him or her, acquiring new strength, new powers, new perceptions.
Reading books is like that assimilation.
I have a list of the books I’ve read since I was a fifth grader in 1958. Over those 64 years, I’ve read over 3700 books. I believe that thoughts and emotions of authors whose works I’ve read have become part of me and enriched me.
This feels like a variation on a line in Auden’s In memory of W.B. Yeats, “The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.” Auden meant it ironically. He was writing from the perspective of the poet who on death “became his admirers.” I’m thinking of that same phenomenon from the perspective of me as a reader: the words of dead men, modified in my guts, become part of me. They nourish me. They give me strength.
