How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (28 page)

Before leaving these fictional equivalents for the interpretive rules of reading, we must caution you not to examine the analogy too closely. An analogy of ,this sort is like a metaphor that will disintegrate if you press it too hard. The three steps we have suggested outline the way in which one becomes progressively aware of the artistic achievement of an imaginative writer. Far from spoiling your enjoyment of a novel or play, they should enable you to enrich your pleasure by knowing intimately the sources of your delight. You will not only know what you like but also why you like it.

One other caution: the foregoing rules apply mainly to novels and plays. To the extent that lyric poems have some narrative line, they apply to lyrics also. But the rules do not cease to apply to non-narrative lyrics, although the connection is much less close. A lyric is the representation of a concrete experience, just like a long story, and it attempts to re-create that experience in the reader. There is a beginning, middle, and end of even the shortest lyric, just as there is a temporal sequence in any experience, no matter how brief and fleeting.

And though the cast of characters may be very small in a short lyric, there is always at least one character-namely, the speaker of the poem.

Third, and last, what are the critical rules for reading fiction?

You may remember that we distinguished, in the case of expository works, between the general maxims governing criticism and a number of particular points-specific critical remarks. With respect to the general maxims, the analogy can be sufficiently drawn by one translation. Where, in the case of expository works, the advice was not to criticize a book-not to say you agree or disagree-until you can first say you understand, so here the maxim is: don't criticize imaginative writing until you fully appreciate what the author has tried to make you experience.

There is an important corollary to this. The good reader of a story does not question the world that the author creates the world that is re-created in himself. "We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donne," said Henry James in The A1t of Fiction; "our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it." That is, we must merely appreciate the fact that a writer sets his story in, say, Paris, and not object that it would have been better to set it in Minneapolis; but we have a right to criticize what he does with his Parisians and with the city itself.

In other words, we must remember the obvious fact that we do not agree or disagree with fiction. We either like it or we do not. Our critical judgment in the case of expository books concerns their truth, whereas in criticizing belles-lettres, as the word itself suggests, we consider chiefly their beauty.

The beauty of any work of art is related to the pleasure it gives us when we know it well.

Let us restate the maxims, then, in the following manner.

Before you express your likes and dislikes, you must first be sure that you have made an honest effort to appreciate the work. By appreciation, we mean having the experience that the author tried to produce for you by working on your emotions and imagination. Thus, you cannot appreciate a novel by reading it passively (indeed, as we have remarked, you must read it passionately) any more than you can understand a philosophical book that way. To achieve appreciation, as to achieve understanding, you must read actively, and that means performing all the acts of analytical reading that we have briefly outlined.

After you have completed such a reading, you are competent to judge. Your first judgment will naturally be one of taste. You will say not only that you like or dislike the book, but also why. The reasons you give will, of course, have some critical relevance to the book itself, but in their first expression they are more likely to be about you-your preferences and prejudices-than about the book. Hence, to complete the task of criticism, you must objectify your reactions by pointing to those things in the book that caused them. You must pass from saying what you like or dislike and why, to saying what is good or bad about the book and why.

The better you can reflectively discern the causes of your pleasure in reading fiction or poetry, the nearer you will come to knowing the artistic virtues in the literary work itself. You will thus gradually develop a standard of criticism. And you will probably find a large company of men and women of similar taste to share your critical judgments. You may even discover, what we think is true, that good taste in literature is acquired by anyone who learns to read.

15. SUGGESTIONS FOR READING STORIES, PLAYS, AND POEMS

The parallel rules for reading imaginative literature that were discussed in the last chapter were general ones, applying across the board to all kinds of imaginative literature-novels and stories, whether in prose or verse (including epics) ; plays, whether tragedies or comedies or something in between; and lyric poems, of whatever length or complexity.

These rules, being general, must be adapted somewhat when they are applied to the different kinds of imaginative literature. In this chapter we want to suggest the adaptations that are required. We will have something particular to say about the reading of stories, plays, and lyric poems, and we will also include notes on the special problems presented by the reading of epic poems and the great Greek tragedies.

Before proceeding to those matters, however, it is desirable to make some remarks about the last of the four questions that the active and demanding reader must ask of any book, when that question is asked of a work of imaginative literature.

You will recall that the first three questions are: first, What is the book about as a whole?; second, What is being said in detail, and how?; and third, Is the book true, in whole or part? The application of these three questions to imaginative literature was covered in the last chapter. The first question is answered when you are able to describe the unity of the plot of a story, play, or poem-"plot" being construed broadly to include the action or movement of a lyric poem as well as of a story. The second question is answered when you are able to discern the role that the various characters play, and recount, in your own words, the key incidents and events in which they are involved. And the third question is answered when you are able to give a reasoned judgment about the poetical truth of the work. Is it a likely story? Does the work satisfy your heart and your mind? Do you appreciate the beauty of the work? In each case, can you say why?

The fourth question is, What of it? In the case of expository books, an answer to this question implies some kind of action on your part. "Action," here, does not always mean going out and doing something. We have suggested that that kind of action is an obligation for the reader when he agrees with a practical work-that is, agrees with the ends proposed -and accepts as appropriate the means by which the author says they can be attained. Action in this sense is not obligatory when the expository work is theoretical. There, mental action alone is required. But if you are convinced that such a book is true, in whole or part, then you must agree with its conclusions, and if they imply some adjustment of your views of the subject, then you are more or less required to make those adjustments.

Now it is important to recognize that, in the case of a work of imaginative literature, this fourth and final question must be interpreted quite differently. In a sense, the question is irrelevant to the reading of stories and poems. Strictly speaking, no action whatever is called for on your part when you have read a novel, play, or poem well-that is, analytically.

You have discharged all of your responsibilities as a reader when you have applied the parallel rules of analytical reading to such works, and answered the first three questions.

We say "strictly speaking," because it is obvious that imaginative works have often led readers to act in various ways. Sometimes a story is a better way of getting a point across-be it a political, economic, or moral point-than an expository work making the same point. George Orwell's Animal Farm and his 1984 are both powerful attacks on totalitarianism.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is an eloquent diatribe against the tyranny of technological progress. Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle tells us more about the petty cruelty and inhumanity of the Soviet bureaucracy than a hundred factual studies and reports. Such works have been banned and censored many times in the history of mankind, and the reason for that is clear. As E. B. White once remarked,

"A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom -he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold."

Nevertheless, such practical consequences of the reading of stories and poems are not of the essence of the matter.

Imaginative writings can lead to action, but they do not have to. They belong in the realm of fine art.

A work of fine art is "fine" not because it is "refined" or "finished," but because it is an end (finis, Latin, means end) in itself. It does not move toward some result beyond itself.

It is, as Emerson said of beauty, its own excuse for being.

Therefore, when it comes to applying this last question to works of imaginative literature, you should do so with caution.

If you feel impelled because of a book you have read to go out and do something, ask yourself whether the work contains some implied statement that has produced this feeling. Poetry, properly speaking, is not the realm of statement, although many stories and poems have statements in them, more or less deeply buried. And it is quite right to take heed of them, and to react to them. But you should remember that you are then taking heed of and reacting to something other than the story or poem itself. That subsists in its own right. To read it well, all you have to do is experience it.

How to Read Stories

The first piece of advice we would like to give you for reading a story is this : Read it quickly and with total immersion. Ideally, a story should be read at one sitting, although this is rarely possible for busy people with long novels. Nevertheless, the ideal should be approximated by compressing the reading of a good story into as short a time as feasible. Otherwise you will forget what happened, the unity of the plot will escape you, and you will be lost.

Some readers, when they really like a novel, want to savor it, to pause over it, to draw out the reading of it for as long as they can. But in this case they are probably not so much reading the book as satisfying their more or less unconscious feelings about the events and the characters. We will return to that in a moment.

Read quickly, we suggest, and with total immersion. We have indicated the importance of letting an imaginative book work on you. That is what we mean by the latter phrase. Let the characters into your mind and heart; suspend your disbelief, if such it is, about the events. Do not disapprove of something a character does before you understand why he does it-if then. Try as hard as you can to live in his world, not in yours; there, the things he does may be quite understandable. And do not judge the world as a whole until you are sure that you have "lived" in it to the extent of your ability.

Following this rule will allow you to answer the first question you should ask about any book-What is it about, as a whole? Unless you read it quickly you will fail to see the unity of the story. Unless you read intensely you will fail to see the details.

The terms of a story, as we have observed, are its characters and incidents. You must become acquainted with them, and be able to sort them out. But here a word of warning. To take War and Peace as an example, many readers start this great novel and are overwhelmed by the vast number of characters to whom they are introduced, especially since they all have strange-sounding names. They soon give up on the book in the belief that they will never be able to sort out all the complicated relationships, to know who is who. This is true of any big novel-and if a novel is really good, we want it to be as big as possible.

It does not always occur to such fainthearted readers that exactly the same thing happens to them when they move to a new town or pa1t of a town, when they go to a new school or job, or even when they arrive at a party. They do not give up in those circumstances; they know that after a short while individuals will begin to be visible in the mass, friends will emerge from the faceless crowd of fellow-workers, fellow-students, or fellow-guests. We may not remember the names of everyone we met at a party, but we will recall the name of the man we talked to for an hour, or the girl with whom we made a date for the next evening, or the mother whose child goes to the same school as ours. The same thing happens in a novel. We should not expect to remember every character; many of them are merely background persons, who are there only to set off the actions of the main characters. However, by the time we have finished War and Peace or any big novel, we know who is important, and we do not forget. Pierre, Andrew, Natasha, Princess Mary, Nicholas-the names are likely to come immediately to memory, although it may have been years since we read Tolstoy's book.

We also, despite the plethora of incidents, soon learn what is important. Authors generally give a good deal of help in this respect; they do not want the reader to miss what is essential to the unfolding of the plot, so they flag it in various ways. But our point is that you should not be anxious if all is not clear from the beginning. Actually, it should not be clear then. A story is like life itself; in life, we do not expect to understand events as they occur, at least with total clarity, but looking back on them, we do understand. So the reader of a story, looking back on it after he has finished it, understands the relation of events and the order of actions.

All of this comes down to the same point: you must finish a story in order to be able to say that you have read it well.

Paradoxically, however, a story ceases to be like life on its last page. Life goes on, but the story does not. Its characters have no vitality outside the book, and your imagination of what happens to them before the first page and after the last is only as good as the next reader's. Actually, all such speculations are meaningless. Preludes to Hamlet have been written, but they are ridiculous. We should not ask what happens to Pierre and Natasha after War and Peace ends. We are satisfied with Shakespeare's and Tolstoy's creations partly because they are limited in time. We need no more.