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Originally Posted by Stewart
On the subject of the importance of fiction I'm reminded of this little snippet from Bernard Malamud's The Assistant (review here). He asked her what book she was reading.
“The Idiot. Do you know it?”
“No. What’s it about?”
“It’s a novel.”
“I’d rather read the truth.”
“It is the truth.”
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I remember how I once met my friend (a professor of French literature in grammar school) in the tram. And as usually, I had a book with me. She asked me also what I was reading. "Oh, The Idiot," I said. And she asked: "Which one?"
(yes, she tought I was speaking about
the author, not the book.
)
Quote:
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Originally Posted by titania7
Similarly, why bother to read books if you don't absolutely love literature? Unless the book is a requirement for school, it seems nonsensical that a person who would never be able to appreciate a good book should take the trouble to read one?
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Well, here are some reasons which I was told - they read "for fun", that is, because of interesting story. They are ignorant of any other layer of the book, they don't care about symbols, language or ideas. They don't think about the book, don't analyse it in any way (I don't mean the way you do it in school, but personal).
Also, reading books makes you seem more educated, cultural, intelligent. Especially if you read "right" books. If a man above forty would confess that after high school he never read any novel, most people would think he's uncultural primitive. If he'd say he reads only manga, they he has some problem. But if he'd say that he reads Dostoyevsky or Proust... well, that sounds much better, doesn't it? That's often also the reason why people go to opera.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by kpayan
At each stage of your "reading career" , there is a level of understanding the fiction.
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I both agree and disagree.
It is true that you learn to recognize things that make book good. That you can learn
skills. But skills are not everything. You can learn how to take great photos, you can learn to distinguish technically good or even great photo from bad one. Yet that doesn't mean you'd be able to judge photos as art, that e.g. Saudek's photos will mean anything to you.
During my study, there were two girls in my study group that always got A for their analysis and interpretations. Oh, they were amazing. You'd think - as everybody else - hey, these really love and appreciate literature! And, as everybody else, you'd be wrong.
All they did, as they told me themselves, was that they learned to find out what they were expected to find out.
It never relly touched them. For them, it was all useless nonsense. Why they studied literature? Because they did like to read, but for them, literature was only entertaninment. Not art.