What we see when we read

Mendelsund - notes from the MEMORY & FANTASY chapter

The reading imagination is loosely associative—but it is not random.
So, it occurs to me that perhaps memory—being the fodder of the imagination, and being intermingled with imagination—feels like imagination; and imagination feels like memory, being constructed of it as well.
Memory is made of the imaginary; the imaginary made of memory

I am reading Dickens again (Our Mutual Friend), and I’m

imagining something from the book—an industrial harbor: a

river, boats, wharves, warehouses…

From where is the material for my picturing this scene derived?

I search my memory to ﬁnd a similar place, with similar docks.

It takes a while.

But then I remember a trip I took with my family when I was a

child. There was a river, and a dock—it’s the same dock as the

dock I just imagined.

I realize later that, when a new friend described to me his home

in Spain, with its “docks,” I was picturing this same dock—the

dock I saw on my childhood vacation; the dock I “used” already

in imagining the novel I am reading.

(How many times have I used this dock?)

(And we may search our imaginings, as we search our dreams,

for hints and fragments of our lost experience.)

Words are eﬀective not because of what they carry in them, but

for their latent potential to unlock the accumulated experience

of the reader. Words “contain” meanings, but, more important,

words potentiate meaning…

Talking on the word "river"

(We are already ﬂooded by river water, and only need the author

to tap this reservoir.)