Reviews
What good is reading if it does not change how we live? Each day makes a life, so we can keep reading and move forward step by step. I will not be disheartened by small steps.
As an adult, whenever I introduce myself to someone, including in a personal statement, the word “reading” has never been missing. It may sound old-fashioned, but books have always been part of my life, and literature in particular held its place firmly even when everything else had lost its place and was wandering. Vivian Gornick’s Unfinished Business is a book about reading—specifically, rereading. Classics return to us for all sorts of reasons, even as times change: they are republished in
Preview: “Trying to approach an integrated self as fully as possible became my life’s task. (...) Once again, I read differently.” Following Fierce Attachments and The Odd Woman and the City, Unfinished Business is the third Vivian Gornick collection. The publisher sent an advance sample. This short, incisive book is a collage memoir and literary criticism. The author urges rereading: Did this book say all it had to say? It explores revisiting what we once could not understand and building a
By rereading works in her eighties that she first read in her twenties, and reading from a woman’s perspective books she had once read only from a man’s point of view, Vivian Gornick goes through a process of reconstructing herself through reading. There are many ways for people to grow, and I think experience plays a very large part. But realistically, I cannot go through every possible situation myself. Literature is a medium that helps us experience things indirectly. We are also bound to
After Fierce Attachments, I wondered why I had only just discovered Vivian Gornick, and was surprised so few of her books are translated here. Unfinished Business is said to be the series finale, about the books that began her writing. Everyone needs a place to turn, and for her it is books. Which books, and how did she read them? Books helped me rise from rock bottom, too. I’m eager to read hers.
The editor’s note shows this book is less about reading or works themselves than meeting again, through reading, the self-image once engraved in a book that became the book of my life, and forming a new relationship with myself. Reading it recalled my first day with The Road Still Ahead and Beyond. I wondered what “unique and great insight” meant. This challenging preview makes me curious about the inspiration and direction of the full book.
I gulped down Unfinished Business in one sitting, then went back to savor its sentences and think them over. I love books, but every so often I hit a reading slump. This book swept it away. The awareness of sexism gained through feminism was precious and revolutionary, but the resulting “gap between theory and practice” became a fatal illness of self-division that gnawed at my inner life. Through rereading, Gornick finally understands literature’s project of seeking an integrated self, and that
After reading Unfinished Business, I could feel Gornick’s desire once again. As Gornick walked, Gornick carefully observed the surroundings and had such a wealth of experiences that Gornick remembered even the small details of conversations with her neighbors. Gornick had always reflected on and explored their own self through these experiences. As Gornick grew older and had fewer experiences, I strongly sensed Gornick’s desire to reflect on themself again through rereading and to feel the
Vivian Gornick first made an impression on me with Fierce Attachments. ✒️ Here, as a reader, Gornick talks about rereading. Everyone probably has at least one book that feels like the book of their life. Mine was My Sweet Orange Tree, which I borrowed from a friend and read in fifth grade. I raced through it in one sitting and cried buckets. When I reread it in my twenties, hoping to feel those same emotions, it showed me a new path in life. In this way, Gornick says, rereading is a way to get
I loved reading as a child and would sit quietly with books while other kids played; I was known as a bookworm. Strangely, I rarely reread, except favorites like Anne of Green Gables, Daddy-Long-Legs, and A Little Princess. I kept choosing new books and felt accomplished finishing them. Unfinished Business completely changed my thinking. As I grow older, my outlook and values change, so old books may look different when reread. Now I want to revisit books like Vivian Gornick and keep trying.
Vivian Gonik: Unfinished work
The final book in Vivian Gornick’s selected works. Unfinished Business is Gornick’s latest work, published when she was 84. In it, she considers the act of rereading, which has formed the basis of the self-awareness shown in her earlier books, as a method of self-discovery and a path to expanding the self. Her continually evolving identity as a reader becomes material for consciousness that brings her closer to a more complete, essential self, her “best self,” both as a person who built an identity and as an author who developed a personal narrative and persona. Never stop reading after just one time. This history of endless reading, so intense that it is almost constitutive, is rewritten at every moment. It draws the reader’s self-awareness out of a vacuum and lets the reader experience a more complete, essential self beyond the levels of insight and ideology.
Korean title: 끝나지 않은 일
Korean author: 비비언 고닉
Korean publisher: 글항아리
ISBN-13: 9791169092333
Reviews
What good is reading if it does not change how we live? Each day makes a life, so we can keep reading and move forward step by step. I will not be disheartened by small steps.
As an adult, whenever I introduce myself to someone, including in a personal statement, the word “reading” has never been missing. It may sound old-fashioned, but books have always been part of my life, and literature in particular held its place firmly even when everything else had lost its place and was wandering. Vivian Gornick’s Unfinished Business is a book about reading—specifically, rereading. Classics return to us for all sorts of reasons, even as times change: they are republished in
Preview: “Trying to approach an integrated self as fully as possible became my life’s task. (...) Once again, I read differently.” Following Fierce Attachments and The Odd Woman and the City, Unfinished Business is the third Vivian Gornick collection. The publisher sent an advance sample. This short, incisive book is a collage memoir and literary criticism. The author urges rereading: Did this book say all it had to say? It explores revisiting what we once could not understand and building a
By rereading works in her eighties that she first read in her twenties, and reading from a woman’s perspective books she had once read only from a man’s point of view, Vivian Gornick goes through a process of reconstructing herself through reading. There are many ways for people to grow, and I think experience plays a very large part. But realistically, I cannot go through every possible situation myself. Literature is a medium that helps us experience things indirectly. We are also bound to
After Fierce Attachments, I wondered why I had only just discovered Vivian Gornick, and was surprised so few of her books are translated here. Unfinished Business is said to be the series finale, about the books that began her writing. Everyone needs a place to turn, and for her it is books. Which books, and how did she read them? Books helped me rise from rock bottom, too. I’m eager to read hers.
The editor’s note shows this book is less about reading or works themselves than meeting again, through reading, the self-image once engraved in a book that became the book of my life, and forming a new relationship with myself. Reading it recalled my first day with The Road Still Ahead and Beyond. I wondered what “unique and great insight” meant. This challenging preview makes me curious about the inspiration and direction of the full book.
I gulped down Unfinished Business in one sitting, then went back to savor its sentences and think them over. I love books, but every so often I hit a reading slump. This book swept it away. The awareness of sexism gained through feminism was precious and revolutionary, but the resulting “gap between theory and practice” became a fatal illness of self-division that gnawed at my inner life. Through rereading, Gornick finally understands literature’s project of seeking an integrated self, and that
After reading Unfinished Business, I could feel Gornick’s desire once again. As Gornick walked, Gornick carefully observed the surroundings and had such a wealth of experiences that Gornick remembered even the small details of conversations with her neighbors. Gornick had always reflected on and explored their own self through these experiences. As Gornick grew older and had fewer experiences, I strongly sensed Gornick’s desire to reflect on themself again through rereading and to feel the
Vivian Gornick first made an impression on me with Fierce Attachments. ✒️ Here, as a reader, Gornick talks about rereading. Everyone probably has at least one book that feels like the book of their life. Mine was My Sweet Orange Tree, which I borrowed from a friend and read in fifth grade. I raced through it in one sitting and cried buckets. When I reread it in my twenties, hoping to feel those same emotions, it showed me a new path in life. In this way, Gornick says, rereading is a way to get
I loved reading as a child and would sit quietly with books while other kids played; I was known as a bookworm. Strangely, I rarely reread, except favorites like Anne of Green Gables, Daddy-Long-Legs, and A Little Princess. I kept choosing new books and felt accomplished finishing them. Unfinished Business completely changed my thinking. As I grow older, my outlook and values change, so old books may look different when reread. Now I want to revisit books like Vivian Gornick and keep trying.
