"It is by this dimension of imaginative relativity that Hogwarts, Middle Earth, Earthsea, Dickens's London, Hemingway's Paris, Didion's anxious California and the mind of Helen Oyeyemi, reclining like a sphinx between her pages in quiet and glittering sleep, all fit inside my tiny apartment, and inside me."
— Brennan, Summer
Author
Date
April 26, 2016
Metaphor
"It is by this dimension of imaginative relativity that Hogwarts, Middle Earth, Earthsea, Dickens's London, Hemingway's Paris, Didion's anxious California and the mind of Helen Oyeyemi, reclining like a sphinx between her pages in quiet and glittering sleep, all fit inside my tiny apartment, and inside me."
Metaphor in Context
"A book can wait a thousand years unread until the right reader comes along," said the critic George Steiner, and that's true. The good ones are incantations, summoning spells. They are a spark, a balm, a letter from home. They contain demons, gods in a box. They are tiny rectangles with the whole universe packed in. We read books that describe magical portals when really it is the books themselves that are the rabbit hole, the wardrobe, the doorway between worlds. Books, like people, are bigger on the inside. It is by this dimension of imaginative relativity that Hogwarts, Middle Earth, Earthsea, Dickens's London, Hemingway's Paris, Didion's anxious California and the mind of Helen Oyeyemi, reclining like a sphinx between her pages in quiet and glittering sleep, all fit inside my tiny apartment, and inside me.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Summer Brennan, "On the Heartbreaking Difficulty of Getting Rid of Books," Literary Hub (April 26, 2016). <Link to lithub.com>
Date of Entry
04/28/2016
