Epigraph: “How do you know that a book is great? They tell you.”

I didn’t always love reading. In a family that did, I was the exception. It wasn’t until junior high school that I gradually came to appreciate literature. A classmate I admired was a reader and used to recommend books to our circle of friends. We would read and discuss the books he recommended. Gradually, others in the group began to recommend books as well.

But in high school, I had a traumatic experience that, in retrospect, shaped my relationship with literature. I had read Hermann Hesse’s popular novels, but it was one of his lesser-known works that got under my skin. I tried to explain my reaction to a friend, but I could not find the words. I just stood there, paralyzed, shocked by my inability to say anything intelligent about the book. (Now that I think about it, this is fitting, since the odyssey in another book, Hesse’s Journey to the East, was described as impossible to describe.) My friend was clearly disappointed in me, and I was embarrassed and ashamed. I vowed that it would never happen again. 

Shortly after I graduated from high school early to travel, I arrived in Paris in the summer with no place to stay. I heard that writers and artists could stay for free at the bookstore Shakespeare and Company. The deal was that in exchange for a place on the floor to sleep, you had to work two hours a day and read a whole book. We would open the store at noon, work for two hours, explore Paris the rest of the time, and be back by midnight to close the store. Everyone staying at the store (around six of us) would then retire to the upstairs library of older, used books to read until 6 am. George Whitman, the proprietor, normally abrupt, would patiently talk with each of us about what we were reading. It was a pleasure. No groping for explanations or interpretations. No pressure to say something smart. Just what do you think? How do you respond to the book? What do you think the author is saying? No answer was “wrong.” It was intellectually satisfying and not threatening. 

I returned to university in the US, but did not study literature. Then came a career in finance, marriage, children, and more. Eventually, my wife encouraged me to retire early so I could attend graduate school in English literature.

I loved graduate school. We read closely and studied the different schools of literary criticism – structuralism, “new criticism,” deconstruction, Marxist lit, feminist, queer, and many others. In the end, two approaches held me – reader-response theory – how you, personally, respond to the book – and narratology – the more technical aspects of how the book is constructed. 

Understanding these schools of thought and approaches made me a much better reader and gave me the confidence and vocabulary to discuss works of literature. I could finally respond to my friend from high school. I felt pretty good about myself and came to agree with Oscar Wilde’s claim that the critic or reader is more creative than the author. For Wilde, the work is merely a starting point for a new creation. It is the critic/reader who sees things that were not present in the creator’s mind. For Wilde, this kind of contemplation is the height of creativity and the proper occupation of man.

Wilde’s essay further boosted my confidence. It freed me to think as I wanted and to claim my own interpretations without feeling insecure. That is why I urge readers not to worry about what they think they are supposed to get from the text. All that matters is what YOU actually get from the text.

So far, so good. But the best way to appreciate something is to try it yourself. For example, learning a musical instrument dramatically deepens one’s appreciation for professional musicians; playing tennis makes watching it far more enjoyable.

Could I really move from appreciating literature to creating it? Enter my friend, Michael Tobin, a superb writer with similar literary tastes. For over 35 years, we have read, edited, and commented on each other’s work. It seemed natural that we would try our hands at writing a novel together. We are both virtually obsessed with Paris. We have both visited many times, and I have family there. We are especially interested in the Paris of the 1920s – how the writers and artists of the period exploded with creativity, influenced one another, and created modernism. 

It was natural for us to set our story in Paris. We wanted to experience the Paris of the 1920s and imagine what it was like for a young creative immigrant from Warsaw, fleeing the persecution of Jews, to seize her place among the great artists of Paris. We wanted to explore the creative process, issues of memory and resiliency, and how different arts influenced one another. We did this through two extraordinary female characters, experiencing Paris vicariously through them. The result is our forthcoming novel, Resonance (Subplot, September 2026). We explain our writing method in an author’s statement at the end of the book, so I will not describe it here. I will say that we loved writing the book together and are well along in planning our next one. 

In the end, we accomplished two things: we created the kind of book we both enjoy reading and deepened our appreciation for literature.

Daniel S. Chertoff worked in various aspects of the investment industry but retired early to pursue doctoral studies in English literature. He has published academic articles and serves as an associate editor for an academic journal. Daniel’s first book, Palestine Posts: An Eyewitness Account of the Birth of Israel (Toby Press, 2019), grew out of a series of extraordinary letters written by his father during Israel’s War of Independence. Together with Michael S. Tobin, Daniel is the author of Resonance: A Novel (Amplify, September, 2026). Perhaps most importantly, in the summer of 1972, Daniel was a “tumbleweed” at Shakespeare and Company in Paris — where Resonance begins.