Here’s a wonderful quotation from Zadie Smith about reading as a collaborative act (from Michael Leddy via Boingboing):
But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, “I should sit here and I should be entertained.” And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.
And, in a comic riff on a similar theme, here’s Josh Kornbluth:
Reading is the best, because it allows/forces you to imagine an entire world. Radio is very good, because it only gives you the sounds, leaving you to supply the visuals for yourself. Television and film: well, at least they let you imagine touch and smell. But life, as we experience it, unmediated by media, leaves nothing — nothing — to the imagination.
You call that entertainment!?
Bonus Link: Steven Johnson’s great post from last year about why blogging and writing books are antithetical.
[tags]reading, writing, Zadie Smith, Josh Kornbluth, Steven Johnson[/tags]
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