"Astonishing. . . . Hilarious. . . . The mixture of analysis and memoir works because the author participates fully in the action of reading. . . . Everyone will wish they could have studied with the man they have come to know through his writing"-The Wall Street Journal
"Reading Shakespeare Reading Me is a triumphant vindication of critical self-absorption. This remarkable, exuberantly written book proves what many would scarcely think possible: that details unique to one individual (and a highly unusual one at that) can lead to fresh insights into some of Shakespeare's most famous plays, and at the same time that a sustained reflection on plays written four hundred years ago can lead to intimate and absorbing self-revelations."-Stephen Greenblatt, author of Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
"Barkan's luminous prose, his prodigious humor, and his generous readings of the plays and sonnets are a real joy. This brings tons of fun to the Bard's oeuvre."-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
A gripping, funny, joyful account of how the books you read shape your own life in surprising and profound ways.
Bookworms know what scholars of literature are trained to forget: that when they devour a work of literary fiction, whatever else they may be doing, they are reading about themselves. Read Shakespeare, and you become Cleopatra, Hamlet, or Bottom. Or at the very least, you experience the plays as if you are in a small room alone with them, and they are speaking to your life, your sensibility.
Drawing on fifty years as a Shakespearean, Leonard Barkan has produced a captivating book that asks us to reconsider what it means to read. Barkan violates the rule of distance he was taught and has always taught his students. He asks: Where does this brilliantly contrived fiction actually touch me? Where is Shakespeare in effect telling the story of my life?
Full of engrossing stories, from family secrets to the world of the theater, and written with humor and genuine excitement about literary experiences worthy of our attention and our love, Reading Shakespeare Reading Me makes Shakespeare's plays come alive in new ways.
Leonard Barkan is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University.