Nabokov Re: reading

[jbor]

on 26/6/03 3:16 AM, Paul Mackin wrote:

> 
> "Incidentally, I use the word READER very loosely. Curiously enough, one
> cannot READ a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major
> reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell
> you why . When we read a book for the first time the very process of
> laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page
> after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very
> process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about,
> this stands between us and artistic appreciation . . ..(goes on too long
> to type out but you get the idea) "
> 
> Lectures on Literature, p 3.
> 

It reminds me of the typical classroom scenario where the teacher asks a kid
to read out a passage from a novel or textbook, and then straight afterwards
the teacher quizzes the same kid about what happened or what it meant. But
the kid reading aloud is the one who has probably extracted the least
*meaning* from the text, because she was so focused on pronouncing the
words, pausing at the commas and full stops, modulating vocal pace, volume,
tone, expression etc. She was busy "performing" the text.

Nabokov is making a distinction between "reading" as a mechanical act, a
type of of decoding, and a different conception of "reading" (or
"rereading") as "artistic appreciation". It's a valid enough point, and I
guess the idea of "double reading" as advocated by post-structuralism and
deconstruction is a logical extension.

It seems Nabokov's other concern is that constituent parts of a text need to
be (re)read and interpreted in the context of the *whole* text.

best