the road to hell
Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Sat, 21 Nov 1998 18:10:34 +0000
‘...Each individual reader has been taught to read by Someone,
and has read specific books (that were also read by many other people
in his or her society), and has led a particular life **in a particular
society.** So reading, even an individual reading a novel in the warmth
of his or her own bed, is a community event...’
It may be for you, Jim, but not for me.
When it comes to reading the only communities to which I belong are
those created for me by the peculiar power of the writers whom I enjoy.
Over the years - through the books & films & music of the time &
through acquaintance with people who had lived there then - I eventually
came to know quite a lot about the Paris of the 20s. But the Paris of
The Sun also Rises was painted (in its ENTIRETY) for me by
Ernest Hemingway - in the days when I knew nothing of all that
other stuff (& which is virtually irrelevant to my enjoyment of The
Sun.)
Similarly, the whaling communities of New England, the Dublin of 1910
& the New York of the 1950s.....
I suspect this enchanted effect was the one Ernest, Herman, Jim & Jerome
intended to create in my - empty but eager - mind.
To try to shut one’s eyes to the intentions of the writer seems to me
an act of rather tired contrariness.
On another issue. I didn’t write that an interest in religion was the
mark
of a third rate mind. (Though I sometimes wonder.) What I spoke of
were
‘affectations of religiosity.’ Attention to the text is the first rule,
Jim.
Scottie B.