“…we don’t just respond to fiction (as might be implied by the idea of reader response), or receive it (as might be implied by reception studies), or appreciate it (as in art appreciation), or seek its correct interpretation (as seems sometimes to be suggested by the New Critics). We create our own version of the piece of fiction, or own dream, our own enactment.
Keith Oatley
I have pondered quotes like this one before; and I seem to regularly respond to them in part because I still live with that utter amazement of how differently we all perceive a work of fiction. So often I am caught by the way in which somebody whose reading tastes/habits I thought I knew well, will delight in and devour a book which I resent for taking taken my time and giving me nothing.
Or when I fall deeply for a book, and find that my emotional investment and response is not shared! How!?!!?
With this one in particular, I like that he suggests that despite notions of reader response, reception studies and art appreciation, we still, in our own minds and imaginations, create a marvellous panoramic, cinematic, evocative rendering of the lives and worlds contained within the covers of a book that is unique.
What this tells me about how we bring experience, education, understanding, empathy and all manner of things to bear as we attempt to understand events, is that we, and our brains, are amazing!
Different ways of reading...
Keith Oatley
I have pondered quotes like this one before; and I seem to regularly respond to them in part because I still live with that utter amazement of how differently we all perceive a work of fiction. So often I am caught by the way in which somebody whose reading tastes/habits I thought I knew well, will delight in and devour a book which I resent for taking taken my time and giving me nothing.
Or when I fall deeply for a book, and find that my emotional investment and response is not shared! How!?!!?
With this one in particular, I like that he suggests that despite notions of reader response, reception studies and art appreciation, we still, in our own minds and imaginations, create a marvellous panoramic, cinematic, evocative rendering of the lives and worlds contained within the covers of a book that is unique.
What this tells me about how we bring experience, education, understanding, empathy and all manner of things to bear as we attempt to understand events, is that we, and our brains, are amazing!
Different ways of reading...
love your different ways of reading!
ReplyDeleteThanks Mo - it is a bit of a favourite that piece...now lives with a friend!
DeleteI love your rusty prose ... could you, would you, link back to its making?
ReplyDeleteAs to the quote, I have longed loved J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy ... the first volume in particular. Having read it many times, I was apprehensive about seeing Peter Jackson's version of The Fellowship of the Ring since I am usually disappointed by how cinematographers don't "get it right." As Jackson's film opened, I gasped in recognition ... there on the screen was my mind's version made "real."
Hi Liz, here is the link to the post - way back in 2011!!!!! https://paperponderings.blogspot.com/2011/03/rusty-rememberings.html
DeleteHow amazing when someone's mind's eye is just like your!?!?! Go well
I have been thinking a lot lately about the complexity of human beings...their creations and their responses to the creations around them. Our media (and some parts of our own brains) tend to flatten us into stereotypes for easy digestion and quick judgement, but we each are profound mysteries capable of deep and intangible connection...or rejection. We are all immersed in the river of life, but we partake of the floating bits that come our particular way and appeal to our particular awareness. Thanks for your quote.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts Dana - we are indeed complex and mysterious and beyond our own understanding probably. I like how you suggest that we are all in it together, yet particular bits are ours and we deal with them in our own awareness; which can also change over time of course and...oh to resist being flattened into a stereotype! How ell.
Delete