Conclusion: Reading Together Apart

The book concludes with a seemingly paradoxical set of beliefs about shared reading: on one hand, the belief that knowing what and how somebody reads grants privileged insight into that person’s inner self; and on the other hand, the view that the inescapably private aspect of reading means the attempt to share a book runs up against the separateness and unknowability of your fellow reader. The apparent lack of sharing in any scene of shared reading argues for a revised understanding of sympathy. This sympathy doesn’t claim to know or identify with another reader’s thoughts and feelings directly but rather embraces gaps in understanding for the recognition they provide of the indirect, imaginary, and interpretative basis of what we count as shared experience. Finally, these scenes offer a way of thinking about the relations between reader and text, and between one reader and another, that extends to current literary criticism.