"Levy, Robert J - Jack Stacey ASBR" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levy Robert J)

reading all of James Fenimore Cooper. The experience soured him on literature
and learning. He became an embittered elementary school teacher notorious for
forcing his classes to take Evangeline seriously.

I soon realized my abilities made me a pariah in the everyday world. People
objected to my habit of pulling books out of their hands in public and replacing
them with others of my own choosing. Sometimes they became insulted when I saw
through their intellectual pretensions. ("You won't like Nostromo," I'd implore.
"Sure, it's masterpiece. But you won't like it. Try the latest Michener instead.
It's exactly the kind of stuff you'll enjoy!")

Clearly I had to hide myself from the prying eyes of the world, and the best
camouflage was the library. There I could recommend books to my heart's content,
and nobody would be the wiser.

Following the initial meeting with my client, I conducted an intensive series of
interviews and phone conversations with the distressed woman. I formed a pretty
good picture of her pathology. Language itself had become an anathema to her. It
began to affect her work. She couldn't bring herself to look at the briefest
memos. She would surreptitiously throw away correspondence rather than read it.
When she typed letters she left out every other word.

I knew what had to be done, and I knew it was going to be tough on her. I called
her one evening. "I want you to buy a copy of the revised version of Stephen
King's The Stand, and read the whole thing."

There was dead quiet on the other end of the line. Finally, a small voice
whispered: "You can't be serious. It's 1,400 pages of. . . of schlock."

"Call me back when you've finished," I replied, and hung up.

Textual immersion therapy. Force the blocked patient to read something,
anything, and make any subsequent interaction with the book recommender
contingent on completion of the assigned material. This compels the blocked
reader to renew contact with words in order to continue contact with the
recommender.

She phoned a few days later.

"I can't believe you made me read that. . . thing!" she said. "I thought you
were supposed to recommend books I would like."

"All part of the treatment. But you're forgetting something."

"What?"

"You did, in fact, actually read it!"

There was a stunned silence, and then a sob of relief.