People Reading

by Paul Dry

If you enter "People Reading" in Google Images, almost forty thousand files will show humans (and other animals) reading books. Does this abundance of images suggest we look for clues about the inward nature of reading in the outer appearance of readers?

Here is Gerard Dou’s painting, "Rembrandt’s Mother."

As a Christmas greeting, a friend gave me a postcard of the portrait with the following inscription:

"Just imagine the book Rembrandt’s mother is perusing must have been produced in some earlier iteration of Paul Dry Books. And what kinds of wonderful ideas is she getting from the book that she will share with her son? And what will he do with those ideas? Such is the numenescence of publishing."

Whether or not our titles have such "numenescence," we can be sure that humans take books in hand — and, as they do, assume a startling array of positions — in the hope of entering the ambit of the book’s spirit.

Can anyone tell us what book Rembrandt’s mother is reading?