From Barb
Here's another thought: the novelist Margaret Atwood just published a nonfiction book called "Negotiating with the Dead"--it's based on a series of lectures she gave on the subject of writing. Well, eventually she turned her thoughts to the reader, too. She said:
"Picture, therefore, a triangle, but not a complete triangle: something more like an upside-down V. The writer and the reader are at the two lateral corners, but there's no line joining them. Between them...is a third point, which is the written word, or the text, or the book, or the poem, or the letter, or whatever you would like to call it. This third point is the only point of contact between the othe two.
..."The writer communicates with the page. The reader also...Pay no attention to the facsimiles of the writer that appear on talkshows, in newspaper interviews and the like. They ought not to have anything to do with what goes on between you....an invisible hand has previously left some marks for you to decipher...the reader is, among other things, a sort of spy. A spy, a trespasser, someone in the habit of reader other people's letters and diaries....the reader does not hear--he overhears.
"...We all know that a book is not really a person. It isn't a human being. But if you are a lover of books as books--as objects, that is-- and ignore the human element in them -- that is, their voices -- you will be committing an error of the soul..."
Finally she writes:
"...books must travel from reader to reader in order to stay alive....the little book is the object of consumption in a communion meal -- the food that may be devoured but never destroyed, the feast that renews itself as well as the feast-guests' link with the spiritual. The angel [another way Atwood describes books] must not only be grappled with, it must be assimilated by the reader, so that it becomes a part of him or her."
Here's another thought: the novelist Margaret Atwood just published a nonfiction book called "Negotiating with the Dead"--it's based on a series of lectures she gave on the subject of writing. Well, eventually she turned her thoughts to the reader, too. She said:
"Picture, therefore, a triangle, but not a complete triangle: something more like an upside-down V. The writer and the reader are at the two lateral corners, but there's no line joining them. Between them...is a third point, which is the written word, or the text, or the book, or the poem, or the letter, or whatever you would like to call it. This third point is the only point of contact between the othe two.
..."The writer communicates with the page. The reader also...Pay no attention to the facsimiles of the writer that appear on talkshows, in newspaper interviews and the like. They ought not to have anything to do with what goes on between you....an invisible hand has previously left some marks for you to decipher...the reader is, among other things, a sort of spy. A spy, a trespasser, someone in the habit of reader other people's letters and diaries....the reader does not hear--he overhears.
"...We all know that a book is not really a person. It isn't a human being. But if you are a lover of books as books--as objects, that is-- and ignore the human element in them -- that is, their voices -- you will be committing an error of the soul..."
Finally she writes:
"...books must travel from reader to reader in order to stay alive....the little book is the object of consumption in a communion meal -- the food that may be devoured but never destroyed, the feast that renews itself as well as the feast-guests' link with the spiritual. The angel [another way Atwood describes books] must not only be grappled with, it must be assimilated by the reader, so that it becomes a part of him or her."
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on Wednesday, October 16, 2002 at 11:13 AM.
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