Sedimental Education; or, Reading As We Age

Discussions of reading as we age are usually tangled up in discussions of rereading, for good reason. recognizing change requires some point of orientation. Yes, there are things we can learn about the impact of aging when we read a new text (we may recognize, for example, that we don't read with the same speed and concentration that we once did). But, for the most part, the effects of the aging process emerge with greater clarity and with more nuance when we have an old reading (or a memory of an old reading) to hold up against our present perceptions. So imagine that you've read a work, on and off, over forty years (an act of imagination that will be easier for some readers than for others). What sorts of differences in your reactions are liable to emerge? here are lots of them, which run along several axes and often conflict.