GR criticism

[alice wellintown]

> My suggestion is based on the assumption that GR must be read at least
> twice.  I think the 1st time one shouldn't try too hard to make sure
> they "get it."

Mann suggests that we should read his works twice: "That is why I
make my presumptuous plea to my readers to read the book twice. Only so can one
really penetrate and enjoy its musical association of ideas. The first time,
the reader learns the thematic material; he is then in a position to read the
symbolic and allusive formulas both forwards and backwards."

And old Nab:

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. When we look at a
painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as
in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The
element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a
painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves
with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a
painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its
details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a
sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let
us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of
evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book,
no matter what it is—a work of fiction or a work of science (the
boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally
believed)—a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The
mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the
only instrument used upon a book.


But who has time to reread or even read, what, with coccupying this
and occupying that?