Here come the Allodidacts

Deep Reading with Ena Alvarado, Franklin Eccher, Brian Hamilton, Benjamin Laufer, Gabriella Okigbo, and Caroline Young.

By William Deresiewicz, published in The Hinternet.

“The highest purpose of a text may be the conversations it enables… The text exists to provide us with an opportunity to talk about it, to commune together through it.” — William Deresiewicz

“My primary experience of the book was a collective experience… the voices of my friends became part of my inner voice. My solitude felt deeper and more complete.” — Brian Hamilton

“Every morning a small group of readers gathered… We acted out scenes, debated, sleuthed, wrote. By diving into the book so rigorously, we mapped out not only the text but how we saw, related, empathized, and connected with one another.” — Caroline Young

“We had no way to rely on secondary literature… We just had the page and each other. Communal reading opened fresh ways of engaging the text beyond exegesis.” — Ena Alvarado

“Outside the Center my discontinuous habits result in a lot of reading-of-pages and not as much reading-of-books. At the Center, a single book overwhelmed us for ten days—ideas, sounds, memory accreted.” — Benjamin Laufer

“With others, the movement between the minutiae and the greater arc felt inexhaustible… A lasting text demands nothing less—and dialogue sustains the momentum and scope.” — Gabriella Okigbo

“We built a world in which Joyce’s novel could be read, and in turn, Joyce’s novel became a world of its own.” — Franklin Eccher