ABSTRACT
Food and literature have many points of similarity; so many, in fact, that Maggie Kilgour was induced to state “[r]eading is… eating” (1990, 9). But what do these two seemingly very different cultural practices have in common? For one thing, both reading and eating involve the transgression of the boundary between inside and outside – that is, the incorporation of foreign substances into the body. As Pamela K. Gilbert has pointed out, “[o]ne eats to incorporate that which one lacks into oneself, to become sufficient to oneself, unified once more, but what one eats then is not only changed into one’s own substance, but in fact changes that substance in turn” (2003, 67). The same holds true for reading. When we read a text, we metabolize its contents and are subsequently changed by it: “[T]he text is a substance that enters the reader and has an effect on him or her” (ibid., 66). The reader incorporates the text’s ideas, norms, and values – that is, the reader’s perception and way of thinking are changed through the act of reading.
