In his essay “Good Readers and Good Writers,” Vladimir Nabokov suggests that a good writer is one who can experience the piece with as few hindrances as possible. Sighting examples ranging from personal experience indentifying with the story to the very act of having to read for understanding, to Nabokov, reading takes almost as much work to do right as writing does! Only when a reader can remove all of the distractions can one see the world the writer was trying to create, and then can appreciate and recognize and analyze the writer’s creative style. If one has an imagination, knowledge of language (or a book to do so), some decent memory, and the ever ambiguous, ever subjective “artistic sense,” then they can truly appreciate a good book.
Well, I must not be a very good reader then! At least, I must not have the artistic sense that he is looking for. To me, I read for pleasure or instruction, coincidently, the lowest two of his reader-types. I am not the analytical type. I rather enjoy relating with the main character; putting myself in their shoes, looking at how I would react and what I would do in a given situation (something which he says ruins the experience for a reader). I for one would rather live the story, in my own imagination, than just experience in the way Nabokov suggests. Of course, I’m just a poor reader, and an even worse writer… or, I’m just human, and aren’t we all so different anyway that, in the end, reading and writing and appreciating a good book is entirely personal? Who’s to say one way is better than the other? Different styles and different content appeal to different people. A good reader is one who does read and can understand it; after that, what makes us human, our individualism, takes over and who are we to say nay?
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