A vindication of the value of independence and the need to distance oneself from a dominant thought that will not leave anyone indifferent.
Reading is a risk, and it is also contagious, but for contagion to occur, one must read with passion. Reading is a luxury, a noble or slightly perverse impulse, a vice that society does not censure. It is also a way of getting away from oneself and from the environment that surrounds us, a means of getting to know oneself better, of being more aware of our mental order and disorder.
Alfonso Berardinelli, Italy’s most indomitable and polemical cultural agitator, brings together in this book his most lucid and provocative reflections on reading and literary canons without political positions, without proclamations or programmes.
For Berardinelli, reading is knowledge, identification, scandal and evasion. His ironic intelligence warns about the risks of technology, the banality of sacred authors, or the mercantilism of the cultural industry.