Word: reader
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...scholarly wags whose work is reprinted in this celebrated collection of 14 essays (Otherwise was first printed in England in 1932) obviously had great fun making history come out differently. A great part of the reader's amusement in reading these revisionist fantasies lies in arguing with the authors. Knowing a bit of history helps, but the editor tactfully prefaces each chapter with a paragraph or so of authentic history to remind dullards of the actual date, say, of Kaiser Wilhelm's accession to power and what really happened at Sarajevo...
...reader is left to wonder how the Good Book might have been better if it began, say, "We chanced by Bethlehem the other evening, where, much to our Surprise...
...reader of history imagines himself to be at the very fulcrum of great events and thus at a gratifying distance from the morning mail or the evening news. There is no better way of keeping reality at bay, unless-and this is the admirable theory behind If It Had Happened Otherwise-the fulcrum of the great event is fancifully shifted a few centimeters, or removed entirely...
...describing these personal letters Fitzgerald comes closest to making that link between the reader and Agee, to capturing the spirit of the writer...
...part rebel and part saint - adds up to a heroic surrogate for the absurd and contradictory in Every man, "the feel of the frayed edges of all the world's foolishness coalescing in her guts." Is her mystery, he asks, harder to explain than the mystery of any reader's life...