The United States remains, for better or for worse, the cultural touchstone of old Europe: what took root in New York two years ago has now arrived in Rome, London, and Valencia. It’s the ‘reading party,’ an American initiative imported by a centrally located hotel, which has begun to take hold in the old town of Valencia. It’s especially geared towards people looking for a book club in the big city, a relaxed space where a passion for reading is fostered, and attendees can discuss books and authors.

On the tables of a carefully curated room, novels, essays, and poetry collections are mixed with a variety of drinks: these are the vestiges of the dual quest of these urban encounters, that of intellectual coexistence provided by the act of reading and that of social coexistence related to it as a complementary form of socialization of one’s own individuality.

Since reading always requires the reader’s participation, it is, in itself, a form of interaction. Reading is interpreting the author’s creation through dialogue, engaging in a silent conversation between them. While the writer gives form to a part of what their mind contains, the reader becomes fully engaged when they understand what the writer intended to express. This dialogue is a form of recreation: both of the material read and of the reader’s soul. What a person reads is not only personally recreated by them, but through reading, the reader creates their own spirit and thus expands their life.

Thanks to this dialogue, every reader experiences a kind of shared experience with the author, however tenuous and distant it may be, like that afforded by the impersonal prose of most science books. In contrast, however, there are readings that are immediately and formally convivial, whose very object is personal engagement with the imprint of a specific, concrete individual. In these cases, reading is not merely a receptive act, but a dialogue born from within the reader’s innermost being. And, in that sense, such a relationship is akin to friendship.

The writer one reads is like a cherished friend: they meet and part, meet again, and resume their companionship and communication. Just like friendship, reading is also a companion to humankind. Strictly speaking, the reader is never alone. Their situation can be described as an intermediate state between being alone and being accompanied: it is a company of two—author and reader—in solitude.

For all these reasons, the book is a privileged instrument for achieving the formative task of our personal individuality: through it, we can enter into dialogue with the memory of humanity, while also living alongside our fellow human beings. Since the invention of the printing press, the book has become a fabulous tool for humanization: it offers the fruits of knowledge and experience and evokes and renews emotions and thoughts. Its magic embodies the noblest function that an object can attain: its transformation into life and human flesh.

However, the book is replaceable in its literal sense: one need only think of the millions of our ancestors who were unaware of its existence or who never read a single page. We must not forget that the book is not an end in itself, but merely a means—a fortunate one—in the unfolding of the human adventure in this world. Moreover, even the book in general is not an unequivocal device: within it reside wisdom, solace, and connection, but also folly, helplessness, and rejection.

That’s why a book is insufficient for life: only to life itself, and to the transcendent power that inspires and sustains it, must we inevitably turn to find ourselves, possess ourselves, and achieve our destiny as human beings. Although the book itself is already a celebration, its lovers can also look forward to the ‘reading party’. It’s the other kind of celebration that has long been common among those who enjoy social interaction in a book club!

Pedro Paricio

Source:  dametresminutos