Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The Functions of Romance Reading

Abstract

ONE OF THE MOST ENGAGING VOLUMES yet published On I the subject of reading is the marvelous collection of pho tographs by Andr? Kert?sz titled simply, On Reading.1 Presented without commentary, this series of images of readers absorbed in apparently diverse materials, in both expected and unexpected contexts, is eloquent in its insistence that books and reading serve myriad purposes and functions for a wide variety of individuals. For that reason alone, this simple photographic essay provides an implicit but nonetheless profound commentary on some entrenched and familiar assumptions about literacy. By grouping together readers as different as the well-dressed man perched on a library ladder in a book-lined study and the ragged young boy sprawled across a pile of discarded newspapers in the street, Kert?sz is able to suggest that whatever the differences and merits of the materials they peruse, all are engaged in some form of the engrossing behavior through which print is transformed into a world.2 The very inclusiveness of the series equalizes readers and reading processes that would, in other contexts, be ranked hierar chically on an imaginary literacy scale. On that scale, the grade of