“Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. ... In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.”
— C.S. Lewis,
“The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others’ Eyes”
Graphophobia is fear of writing. Sophophobia is fear of learning or knowledge, and metrophobia is a fear of poetry. I’m not a phobic kind of guy, unless we’re talking snakes, and then I’m a VERY phobic guy … and on a grand “George Costanza” level. That is, the kind of guy who would knock the elderly over to get out of any building thought to be burning. The irrational fear of snakes is called ophidiophobia, with proof of its irrationality being that simply typing the word just now unsettled me.
I thank God that I have no reading or writing phobias, however, the two activities that constitute a kind of cerebral respiration function for me: reading as inhalation, writing as exhalation. On the other hand, I could be diagnosed as being abibliophobic, one who fears running out of reading material, which would more formally substantiate my love of libraries and doctor’s........