pashun
Scottie Bowman (bowman@mail.indigo.ie)
Sat, 25 Jul 1998 07:50:00 +0000
I for one find it hard to ignore a cry from the heart such as
Patrick has just sent us.
All my instincts are on his side. I doubt if anyone on this list
has been more dismissive of academic critics than I have.
And I certainly share his weariness as the next load of fatuity
arrives from the constructionists or demolitionists or whomever.
Where I begin to have a problem is his suggestion that it's all
much of a muchness & that his taste or my taste merits just
the same respect as anyone else's. There were certainly people
in my life - even one or two teachers - who had read more,
lived more, & exposed their sensibilities to a wider range
of experiences than I had. And whose judgments (of books, writers,
perhaps life in general) I came to see were `sounder' than my own
had originally been.
I can think of quite a number of books which seemed initially
unreadable but which later became some of my richest possessions.
(Marcel Proust & Thomas Mann to name just four.) I only persisted
with them because I thought they would be good for me.
Patrick implies that reading with 'passion' is the thing to do.
I'm not so sure. A great many people can do that. Is there any
special merit in it ? I'd have thought, in a way, this list is
packed with Toms, Dicks & Harriets who read Salinger with passion.
What's much rarer & much more valuable in my mind is writing
with the stuff.
Scottie B.