I am afraid of reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again. I adored it when I was a teenager but now I am afraid not that the book will somehow have changed from what it was, but to actually discover that I was the one who changed from that time.
No truer words were ever spoken. Since each of us is an individual with different life experiences, hopes and desires when encounter a book we each have our own interpretations of the words mean.
Depends on how solipsistic you want to get since you can't even know there are other persons much less know what they read or interpreted from reading. Meaning is subjective shouldn't equate to common interpretation and understanding is impossible.
It's interperative like all art mediums.
Some people read Neuromancer and feel it's a warning against a possible future.
Others think it's cool and try to propel ourselves into such a future.
I resigned myself to that fact even before I started writing my novel. In fact, "the law of recognition" is one of the themes: The book is what it is perceived to be. And "the law of blood": I will not try to steal your perception. The Occipital Mouse.
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https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/2516/where-do-i-find-edmund-wilsons-quote-no-two-persons-ever-read-the-same-book/2517?newreg=dd09c8180ed54c67a5eff9ae1c23636a
It was first in print 20 years before Edmund Wilson was born.
Both Dirk Gently books still hold up without having to make complete sense. If you can find the audio books narrated by Adams, they're even better.
Some people read Neuromancer and feel it's a warning against a possible future.
Others think it's cool and try to propel ourselves into such a future.