---
product_id: 45044178
title: "How Literature Saved My Life Paperback – Illustrated, November 5, 2013"
brand: "david shields"
price: "3928 kr"
currency: ISK
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 5
url: https://www.desertcart.is/products/45044178-how-literature-saved-my-life-paperback-illustrated-november-5-2013
store_origin: IS
region: Iceland
---

# How Literature Saved My Life Paperback – Illustrated, November 5, 2013

**Brand:** david shields
**Price:** 3928 kr
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** How Literature Saved My Life Paperback – Illustrated, November 5, 2013 by david shields
- **How much does it cost?** 3928 kr with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.is](https://www.desertcart.is/products/45044178-how-literature-saved-my-life-paperback-illustrated-november-5-2013)

## Best For

- david shields enthusiasts

## Why This Product

- Trusted david shields brand quality
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## Description

Full description not available

## Images

![How Literature Saved My Life Paperback – Illustrated, November 5, 2013 - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81-QN6xnpaL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A difficult and ultimately beautiful read
*by N***A on February 5, 2013*

I keep thinking in adjectives as I try to summarize, for myself, why I love this book: it's brilliant, it's messy, it's non-linear, it's self-contradictory, it's honest to the point of grittiness at times. It's lifelike.This is what consciousness is, isn't it? A messy, ever-sifting mélange of Proust and Spiderman, George W. Bush and Leo Tolstoy. Shields is an intellectual pack-rat. He saves everything. This is a book that rewards re-reading and re-thinking. It made me uncomfortable, which in the end I had to accept as a gift. Shields says, "I believe in art as pathology lab, landfill, recycling station, death sentence, aborted suicide note, lunge at redemption. Your art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself."This book IS dangerous. It's subversive. Like Shields's last book, Reality Hunger, it made me question almost everything inherent in my five-decade love affair with literature -- from what I love to why I love it to what my motivations are. I constantly had to stop reading so that I could think. Much of what's written (or presented) in literature and art encourages us to live a vicarious life. What I love about this book is that it encourages us to live one of our own.Does it answer the question implied in its title? Yes. No. Sort of. Absolutely. Shields of all people recognizes that answers to this question must be endlessly multiform and provisional. Ultimately, it is less a treatise than a meta-conversation, and the sensation I had upon completing it was similar to how I feel after having spent hours in harrowing talk with a good friend about things that matter: clarified, exhausted, frustrated, unable to stop thinking.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent discussion of books and reading
*by J***R on May 13, 2013*

The only reason I am giving 4 stars instead of 5 is that many of the discussions were too short. But this is a wonderful analysis of how the books discussed affected Shields. The discussion is so good, the only fault I can find is when he just lists books rather than discussing them, or when he just gives a one sentence review that doesn't tell you very mych. I got many suggestions here for new books to get. Finally, in this electronic age, always good to see someone praise the virtues of reading.

### ⭐⭐ Misleading Title, Incoherent Contents
*by J***S on March 19, 2013*

My thoughts on this book are perfectly captured in Shields' thoughs on another book. On page 139, Shields writes about Renata Adler's 'Speedboat' -- "What is the book, exactly -- a novel? memoir? cultural criticism? philosophical investigation? journal? journalism? stand-up comedy? [...] The chapter titles don't very accurately or fully describe their ostensible contents. The material can't be held by its titular container."The bottom line is that this book did not meet the expectations that the big title set up. I was expecting an intimate account of hard times the writer found himself in and how he found within literature either the courage or wisdom necessary to persevere. Instead, I got got a man occasionally talking about himself with his arms crossed and showing no emotion whatsoever.

## Frequently Bought Together

- How Literature Saved My Life
- The Art Lover: A Novel (New Directions Classics)
- DMZ Colony

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*Product available on Desertcart Iceland*
*Store origin: IS*
*Last updated: 2026-02-24*