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About this quote

What does it mean?
Wilson suggests that reading is a unique, non-repeatable experience influenced by the reader's changing state.
In plain terms
You never read the exact same book the same way twice.
What can you take from it?
Context changes how we interpret texts.

Where it applies

  • literary analysis
  • personal reflection

Putting it to work

  • revisiting old texts

Questions to consider

  • Does meaning reside in the book or the reader?
  • Can we ever truly know the past?

Another view

This ignores the stability of the text itself.

More from Edmund Wilson

  1. Education, the last hope of the liberal in all periods.

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  2. It may be that there is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.

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  3. Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.

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