WE ARE CONCERNED with the ability of literature to open and encourage a dialogue between reader and text, between the reader and himself, and, ultimately, between the reader and, well, life. In a recent article in The Guardian, writer Philip Pullman describes the dynamics of this relationship:

There's a back-and-forthness about it. The book proposes, the reader questions, the book responds, the reader considers. We bring our own preconceptions and expectations, our own intellectual qualities, and our limitations, too, our own previous experiences of reading, our own temperament, our own hopes and fears, our own personality to the encounter. (11/9/04)

Pullman goes on to assert that this relationship (and in essence the very act of reading) is a "profoundly, intensely, essentially democratic one," one that is on the decline in the United States.

We want to affirm that this democratic act can occur on the smallest of levels, that this exchange between reader and text can happen in as little as 1,000 or 100 words, and that it is sometimes the most seemingly mundane subject matter that can inspire the most hope.

Then: WHAT THIS MEANS