Nabokov Re: reading

[Polyplunger]

On Fri, 27 Jun 2003, jbor wrote:

> 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.

But where is memory?!