Sometimes I think that the problem with reading is a problem with its plausibility.
Here is a passage from Northrop Frye’s theory of modes: (P 51)
“We note in passing that imitation of nature in fiction produces, not truth or reality, but plausibility, and plausibility varies in weight from a mere perfunctory concession in a myth or folk tale to a kind of censor principle in a naturalistic novel.”
There was talk during the Bush administration of examining library records. Librarians were right to resist such inquiries on the grounds that such a intrusion in the civil liberties of readers would endanger the ability for free discussion of ideas. However, some part of me wished to see the results of an exhaustive survey of what people were reading from libraries. Which books were reserved, by whom, and how often. This is the kind of data that would speak volumes about our culture. Only recently has such information even been theoretically available. And yet, of course we should not look at such data. Though I like to sometimes imagine that the Librarians of the world know exactly what we are reading and thus know who we are, or worse, who we would like to be.
This is one of my favorite techniques. It was employed by W.G. Sebald in The Emigrants. It is used to drift from one 1st person point of view into another 1st person point of view. And it’s not as simple as it sounds. For one thing, he doesn’t use quotation marks to demarcate dialogue. Also, paragraphs come rather infrequently, so it’s not as simple as indenting. He uses a couple of techniques to do this. Here’s one:
The literary arts seem more today than ever before wracked with anxiety. By anxiety, I mean in a state of terror without object. A fear that there is something to fear. Everywhere the future of literature seems uncertain, its coming death all but declared. The writer, the devoted reader, the publisher, the journalist, the teacher, the professor, in a vague, generalized way feel that something is happening to literary culture. Though should one try to pinpoint the source or find definitive proof of this anxiety, one will most surely find competing evidence that will immediately disprove whatever was once proven.
Value Investing is the most literary of all the investment paradigms. It was invented by Benjamin Graham, a man who was not without certain literary qualities. As a prodigious student at Columbia, he was given a choice of instructorships ranging from Mathematics to English and Philosophy. Pragmatism drew him to finance. Alice Schroder’s Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life provides very moving portrait of the Dean of Wall Street, often withdrawing from the company of men and longing to commune with the likes Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal. “Money isn’t everything” he tells a young Buffet at a cafeteria in lower Manhattan. No, among Graham’s other pastimes were philandering, teaching, and writing, the trifecta of almost all literary figures.
Even to use the word “Aesthetic” in casual conversation is a sure way to alienate your audience. It is a foreign, archaic word, like “metaphysics” or “quotidian” or “stoic.” It’s not just that our vocabulary has narrowed. We have become a practical people. Functionality, objectivity, measurability are the words of the day. And really why not? Beauty (it is supposed) will not save the ozone layer, or make the computer faster, or improve your SAT scores. Art is not science. Science got us to the moon. And thus, the virtue in having aesthetic concerns or of being as “aesthete” is lost to us. That is, except in the domain of food. And there it is very much alive.
The cliché is that the book is always better than the movie. But what is more impressive is when the movie conveys the feeling that you have just read a book. The film making of Andrei Tarkovsky in each of his seven leaves the audience with just such a feeling. And that is the easiest way to define awe.
How does he achieve this effect?
I know what it is to be a poor reader. I do not know what it means to be a passionless reader. Books are filled with ideas. Ideas are a kind of candy. There is no one in my experience who dislikes candy.
I am a poor reader because I’ve always felt that I have an inability to control the flitting of my mind and which expresses itself most eloquently in the flitting of my eye. Watch the eye of one who is watching. The pupils look like two cooks ambushed by the morning breakfast rush. It is here and
Here is a technique for the representation of foreign speech chosen by Hemingway in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Not often imitated, it is notable for its unconventional and mixed methodologies including 1) Archaisms, 2) Anglicization or direct translation of idiomatic elements, 3) Italicized foreign words.
Here’s an example:
As they came up, still deep in the shadows of the pines, after dropping down from the high meadow into the wooden valley and climbing up it on a trail that paralleled the stream and then left it to gain, steeply, the top of a rim-rock formation formation, a man with a carbine stepped out from behind a tree.
Can there be said anything of Phillip Roth that has not already been said? As a public figure he predicts the end of his own genre. And yet, to read his work is to become intimate with the original thrust and power fiction has on the world of ideas. Existence, the subjective reflection, the booger rolled in the fingers and felt for the thousandth time, is still a vital act. Just because there are less readers does not mean it is unimportant. This is to succumb to the fallacy of near-history.
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