What We See When We Read
Subtitle: A Phenomenology: With Illustrations
By: Peter Mendelsund
Edition: First Vintage Books edition.
Publisher: Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 419
ISBN-13: 9780804171632
Subjects: Books and reading; Phenomenology; Visual perception in literature
Description: "A gorgeously unique, fully illustrated exploration into the phenomenology of reading--how we visualize images from reading works of literature, from one of our very best book jacket designers, himself a passionate reader. What do we see when we read? Did Tolstoy really describe Anna Karenina? Did Melville ever really tell us what, exactly, Ishmael looked like? The collection of fragmented images on a page--a graceful ear there, a stray curl, a hat positioned just so--and other clues and signifiers helps us to create an image of a character. But in fact our sense that we know a character intimately has little to do with our ability to concretely picture our beloved--or reviled--literary figures. In this remarkable work of nonfiction, Knopf's Associate Art Director Peter Mendelsund combines his profession, as an award-winning designer; his first career, as a classically trained pianist; and his first love, literature--he considers himself first and foremost as a reader--into what is sure to be one of the most provocative and unusual investigations into how we understand the act of reading"--

"An illustrated exploration into the phenomenology of reading"--
Table of contents: title: Picturing "picturing"; title: Fictions; title: Openings; title: Time; title: Vividness; title: Performance; title: Sketching; title: Skill; title: Co-creation; title: Maps & rules; title: Abstractions; title: Eyes, ocular vision, & media; title: Memory & fantasy; title: Synesthesia; title: Signifiers; title: Belief; title: Models; title: The part & the whole; title: It is blurred.