Monday, July 15, 2019
Christian Morrow answers question number 4
Imagination is necessary in reading and in writing. One of the first lessons I learned in creative writing is to not underestimate the reader and add an abundance of details. Good authors leave space for the reader to fill. Good readers fill that space in order to have a conversation with the author. “So, what do you do? You can’t simply say, Well, it’s a river, so it means x, or apple picking, so it means y… Associate freely, brainstorm, take notes. Then you can organize your thoughts, grouping them together under headings, rejecting or accepting different ideas or meanings as they seem to apply. Ask questions of the text...” (Foster, 113). As Foster explains, the symbols, metaphors, and etc. make the meaning of a text ambiguous. Literature is not something that can be calculated down to T, it must be broken down utilizing past knowledge of literature and one’s own imagination. Reading and writing is not a process, it’s a conversation between two creative minds. Sometimes the conversation can garner solid conclusions, but often than not it is left up to speculation and dissection of the reader's mind to discover their own truth. Readers are warriors marching into their subconscious abyss armed with nothing but a pen and sticky notes, or if they own the book, a highlighter. These are their harmonic scalpels, utilized to dissect their own perception of the authors intentions. Without the author there would be no surgery, and without reader there would be no surgeon. As stated by Foster, “We tend to give writers all the credit, but reading is also an event of the imagination; our creativity, our inventiveness, encounters those of the writer, and in that meeting we puzzle out what she means, what we understand her to mean, what uses we can put her writing to… That is to say, we can’t simply invent meaning without the writer…” (114). A book is not complete until it is read. It isn’t a conversation if one is talking to a wall. It is not a surgery without a patient and vice versa. The act of reading is a creative one, as the blanks are filled in by the constructs of the readers mind.
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I agree with your statement about the importance of readers being able to fill in spaces of literature. It allows the reader to assess and process the piece while also using their imagination to make connections within the text. Also like you said, many times in literature exact conclusions aren’t established, but aspects of it are left up to interpretation and discussion. This makes the act of reading much more engaging because the reader is able to search for symbols, motifs, themes and possible meanings not only in the specific work of literature, but also between other works as well.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this response, because I think it accurately links many of the questions together, and by extension, the entire work’s message. Professor’s recognize ambiguity and make a conversation with the text and the author by using their prior literary knowledge, personal experiences, and symbolic interpretations. It truly takes two to complete a story, seeing as it is the author’s job to merely put the idea in our minds that they had certain intentions upon creating the story; however, it is up to us to make it our own. I especially enjoyed your surgery metaphor referring to the reader’s dissection of work of literature. We may either read the piece at face value, or we make search deeper for a more enriched reading and knowledge base. Of course, it is important to remember that each time we do this, we are giving ourselves more experience and a greater knowledge base that will further enhance each and every reading to come.
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