Comparing Joseph Brodsky's On Grief And Reason

The author, Joseph Brodsky, of this passage taken from “How to Read a Book” from On Grief and Reason, presents the reader with an enigmatic literature dilemma that individuals face in determining what they should read. This dilemma questions how to manage all the literature material that is presented continuously and how to decide what one should read, as there is limited time of one existence. This passage has an educative, informative, and didactic tone to present this dilemma, as it tries to inform and teach the reader about the controversial enigma about literature, and presenting some solutions to the problem, however ending in the beginning.

From the beginning of the first paragraph he presents two kinds of antithesis ideas. As the first sentence says, “Since we are all moribund, and since reading books is time-consuming, we must devise a system that allows us a semblance of economy.” The first idea is that the task of reading is a time consuming one.
He does this by interpreting the reader as a castaway adrift in a literary ocean, “with pages and pages rustling in every direction, clinging to a raft whose ability to stay afloat you are not so sure of.” The author then suggests an alternative solution for this particular dilemma. He suggest that the reader could “develop your own taste, to build your own compass, to familiarize yourself, as it were, with particular stars and constellations – dim or bright but always remote.” However, he then establishes that this process consumes a lot of time and concluding that at the end this is not a respectable idea. He then proposes another alternative solution, implying that is kind of similar than the first one, that to rely on a “friends advice”, and find something that is appealing. However, the author continues to find a downside by saying that it is a “poor insurance, for the ocean of available literature swells and widens