How to read a book

How to read a book?

Yan writes: While reading How Should One Read a Book by Virginia Woolf, I come across some words and phrases whose meanings I am not quite certain. Could you help with one of them? The sentence goes like this: But if you open your mind as widely as possible, the signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. What does “the twist and turn of…” mean? Does it mean one distorts the true meaning of what an author writes?

My comments: It's a good question, as all questioning is good, good in that it might lead to good answers.

Speaking of which, I know I don't always have good answers. That's why I don't take mightily good questions, such as this one, head-on all the time. I have, however, a simple answer as I as a man have come to relish the simple in preference to the complicated.

And the simple answer to your last question is NO.

No, you mustn't distort the meanings of an author when you read his work.

At least don't practice doing it on purpose, ok?

Subconsciously we do distort authors, you know. We do it all the time. Language, as it were, contains innumerable ghosts, with layers and layers of hidden meanings and nuances.

Due to different upbringing and experience, we perceive the world quite differently. We do the same with words. The same words often mean different things to different people.

Take the word “hospitalization” for example. To some people, being confined to a sickbed in a hospital room surrounded by doctors in white clothes is comforting. To them, hospitalization is something soothing and reassuring. To others who have had bad experiences of one kind or another with doctors, the idea of hospitalization may bring back memories of a nightmare.

Me? I hold a still different point of view. I think doctors are something to respect but to steer clear from, as Confucius used to say.

The point is, we are full of perceived ideas about words and language to begin with, as we embark on the journey of reading a book. Because of it we often read a different story than what is intended by the author. We don't get what the author supposes to say, only what we suppose him to say.

As a result, readers don't get to feel the author and share his deeper feelings and emotions, which were really what the author intends us to do. I guess that is what is meant by “the signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness”.

Twist and turn?

Literature is not painting, which presents a wholesome image to the viewer from the first glance. The viewer sees the whole thing at the same moment. Telling a story with words on the other hand is a lineal process, and hence a lineal experience (Does this expression work?) for the reader. Reading a story through a line of words and sentences is like walking down a long narrow zigzagging road.

However, if you ask the viewer to imagine mimicking the painter drawing a picture, then that would be a similar experience to reading a book. Imagine drawing the picture yourself but with the author's hand and pencil. The pencil zigzags, this way and that way, with a line here and a dot there before the whole thing is put together. Let the zigzagging pencil represent the writer's pen making “twists and turns” on a page and you get what writing is like.

So, how to read an author?

Withhold judgment. Hear the author out. Finish the whole thing before saying to yourself, oh, I got it! – if you ever get it and actually have to say it.

Otherwise you get one of those common reading experiences in which you come to a judgment of a book before finishing the first page(s). And you put the book down and go away talking about its author as though you have known the man inside out.

That's not fair to the author, who mostly wants you to hear him out. Neither is it fair to you, the reader who has forked out cash for the book.

The author gets the best of the bargain of course. As it is with the doctor, who is guaranteed to make money once a patient crosses his door no matter if his prescription provides a cure; the author is guaranteed to make an income once the reader buys the book, whether they finish reading the whole volume or just the first page, whether they praise his work or trash it.

And so the author can live with it (and quite comfortably in fact) if the payment is large.

What has the reader got to do then?

Live with it.

And perhaps heed Woolf's advice: Read with an open mind.

Withhold judgment. Hear him out. Share the author's unique experience of which words are a mere expression. And let “the signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness” become as clear as a picture.

Or don't read a book at all.

This last, I'm afraid, is exactly what most people are doing today.

Kidding aside, I thank you for keeping with (not keeping clear of) me for another year. I'm taking a vacation at yearend and will be back at the keyboard mid-January. I wish you all, my dear readers, an enjoyable 2009 with great health and, not to forget, a little money of your own.