{"id":8539,"date":"2016-11-09T11:00:26","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T16:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?p=8539"},"modified":"2026-02-21T12:07:43","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T17:07:43","slug":"on-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/on-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"On reading – links roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day I saw somebody say, \u201cLinks roundups are lame.\u201d Well, I like them, but I have minority opinions more often than not. You know what? Fuck that. I like \u2019em and this is my blog.<\/p>\n

\n

Is \u2018devouring\u2019 books a sign of superficiality in a reader?<\/a> Amongst romance readers, of course, this question is fightin\u2019 words.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Novels particularly were associated with such habits of consumption, for they became a symbol of the newly accessible literary market. Commentators described them as feeding unwholesome appetites. In turn, certain readers were linked to novel-imbibing habits, particularly women. Describing their reading as consumption was a way of denigrating them, for it positioned them as vulnerable, ignorant and morally contagious. Gustatory metaphors often implied that women read according to the flesh, in contrast to the disembodied realm of \u2018rational\u2019 masculinity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Countered by slow reading<\/a>. These (to a fiction reader) are also fightin\u2019 words:<\/p>\n

But Lancelot R Fletcher, the first present-day author to popularise the term \u201cslow reading,\u201d argues that slow reading is not so much about unleashing the reader\u2019s creativity, as uncovering the author\u2019s. \u201cMy intention was to counter postmodernism, to encourage the discovery of authorial content,\u201d the American expat explains from his holiday in the Caucasus mountains in eastern Europe. “I told my students to believe that the text was written by God \u2013 if you can\u2019t understand something written in the text, it\u2019s your fault, not the author\u2019s.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emphasis mine.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have several opinions on this, all conflicting, except that postmodernism does tend to drive me up a wucking fall because invariably the term \u201cintersectionality\u201d and others like it enter the conversation. They\u2019re rabbit trails that may or may not be as interesting as the original text.<\/p>\n

One literature professor, Pierre Bayard, notoriously wrote a book about how readers can form valid opinions about texts they have only skimmed \u2013 or even not read at all. \u201cIt\u2019s possible to have a passionate conversation about a book that one has not read, including, perhaps especially, with someone else who has not read it,\u201d he says in How to Talk About Books that You Haven\u2019t Read<\/em> (2007), before suggesting that such bluffing is even \u201cat the heart of a creative process.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

See: Born Yesterday<\/em><\/a>. No, seriously, I\u2019m telling you to see the movie. It\u2019s not Great Art (nominated for a Raspberry),1<\/a><\/sup> but there\u2019s a pivotal scene with Nora Dunn\u2019s character that is the thematic heart of the whole movie, when she\u2019s surprised that Melanie Griffith\u2019s character read the entirety of Democracy in America<\/em>. She tells her that nobody ever reads those books. They just know enough about it to look smart at parties.<\/p>\n

Equivocations:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. There are way too many books to be read to spend one\u2019s life slow reading each book you pick up.<\/li>\n
  2. How many times have you devoured a book, then gone back for the express purpose of picking up details you know you missed the first time because you were so engaged with the story?2<\/a><\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \n

    ______________________________<\/p>\n

    1<\/a>.<\/span>  It\u2019s a remake of a 1950s movie and there is a stage play, so you don\u2019t have to torture yourself with this one.<\/p>\n

    2<\/a>.<\/span>  Movie example: Watching Eyes Wide Shut<\/em> as a single person is an entirely different experience watching it as a married person.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    One day I saw somebody say, \u201cLinks roundups are lame.\u201d Well, I like them, but I have minority opinions more often than not. You know what? Fuck that. I like \u2019em and this is my blog. Is \u2018devouring\u2019 books a sign of superficiality in a reader? Amongst romance readers, of course, this question is fightin\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[317,532],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8539"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22804,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539\/revisions\/22804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}