LITERATURE: Reading

"I think reading should be a hard job and readers should take it as seriously as they can."

S. Ersinghaus, in a comment to the post, "But I Meant…"

Well said.  Although I might compromise a bit on the should, and offer could in its place, to allow for trifles that don’t bear pondering such as "Do Not Remove Label Under Penalty of Law," or a Danielle Steel novel perhaps.

But Steve is referring to writing in its best form, that of literature.  There are several ways to read, from scanning for just the basics of concept or information to the dissection of a work in either its intellectual meanings or, as I have developed lately, its techniques of skill in presentation.  Neither of the latter will lose meaning of the story, the narrative, and yet it is something that does require learning and practice and yes, hard work, to accomplish.  The joys of understanding and appreciating a written work beyond text are comparable to the development of viewing visual art armed with questions and answers that rise above the plane of color, size or form.  It is context, it is understanding the nature of the canvas and pigment, clay or marble, time of creation and the wonder of one mind seeing into another’s. 

I would hope that Steve will see fit to expound on this simple sentence a bit more, perhaps at GLH.