![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
In praise of authors
I've just read C. S. Lewis's essay on 'good' and 'bad' literature. Essentially he argues that 'good' literature is determined by the kind of reading it permits, invites, and perhaps even compels. Good literature may allow 'bad' readings, but bad literature (like bad music, bad poetry and bad art) will never sustain a 'good', literary reading. A literary reading is seen in things like the desire to re-read, an open-ness and receptiveness to allowing the text to mould and transform you, and time spent thinking about the text itself (rather than just the ideas it refers to). This is distinct from the 'unliterary' reading which 'uses' the text for information, entertainment or other things (which, Lewis asserts strongly, may be good things in themselves).
Anyway, it made me think quite a lot about fanfiction. I can count on less than the fingers of one hand the number of fanfics I've read that I've wanted to re-read, to savour, to mull over. Or those where I've been blown away by the literary artistry of the text itself. Or those that have done anything more for me than pass a dull hour or two. After the End, perhaps. Roger and Lisa springs to mind (and probably others of St M's too).
I'm sure that this is, at least in part, to do with the democratization of publishing. But I wonder if it's also partly to do with things like serial publication of chapters? And reading on screen?
Anyway, this is how Lewis's essay ends, and this is what I wanted to share with all of you who are authors, in grateful thanks:
Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes [animals] cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog.
Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.
Thank you.
Anyway, it made me think quite a lot about fanfiction. I can count on less than the fingers of one hand the number of fanfics I've read that I've wanted to re-read, to savour, to mull over. Or those where I've been blown away by the literary artistry of the text itself. Or those that have done anything more for me than pass a dull hour or two. After the End, perhaps. Roger and Lisa springs to mind (and probably others of St M's too).
I'm sure that this is, at least in part, to do with the democratization of publishing. But I wonder if it's also partly to do with things like serial publication of chapters? And reading on screen?
Anyway, this is how Lewis's essay ends, and this is what I wanted to share with all of you who are authors, in grateful thanks:
Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes [animals] cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog.
Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.
Thank you.
no subject
Xia
no subject
It was published in 1965 by CUP and it's called 'An experiment in criticism'. I really enjoyed it and read it in its entirety (when I really only needed to read the first and last chapters for the essay I'm writing). It's not a long book - just over 100 pages. Don't know if it's still in print, but a library might be able to track it down for you.
There are some wonderfully old-fashioned expressions and Lewis is very much writing to address the society of his time, but I think the points he makes about different attitudes to art (of all media) are still very much valid. My guess is that people who are 'good readers' will instantly recognise themselves in it (as I did) and those who are not will dismiss it as nonsense.
no subject
Xia
no subject
no subject