Re:Fuck the Bread. The Bread Is Over (2020)
by YeGoblynQueenne on Thursday May 13, 2021 @05:15AM
(#27140123)
>> If many understand the same thing, then she is a good writer. If we all think we understood different things, then you are a good reader.
If I may be a bit dogmatic, I think literary writing is the polar opposite of technical writing. Technical writing must be as precise and unambiguous as possible so that every reader unerstands the same thing on reading; even if it takes careful, even painstaking reading, even if it takes a large amount of background knowledge to actually be able to understand what is written (think of difficult and convoluted mathematical proofs of theories in obscure sub-fields of which there are very few experts).
Literary writing on the other hand, fails if it invokes the same feelings and images in more than one person. Good literary writing should be different for every reader, so that the relation between the reader and the written piece becomes something unique and personal for every separate reader.
This last point is lost in the way that literature is taught at schools. At school, the teacher reads a passage from some literary work, asks the students for their interpretation, then proceeds to (more or less subtly) teach the "right" interpretation. This is horribly confusing to anyone who really likes reading exactly for the freedom to interpret everything as they like, and to form their own, their very own, emotions and images.
I remember this from high school. We were given reading assignments of books such as "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" or "The Little Prince" and then spent a couple of lectures disucssing them in the format above. For me, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was all about the society of sea birds and other animals. I remember wondering, "how do the seagulls know how an owl's mind works. How about eagles"? But the book was clearly written by an author who had an entirely different idea in mind. And it was taught by a teacher who also had a completely different one, also. But somehow everybody missed the point: we're all sweeping our eyes over the same text, but each one of us is reading a different story. This attempt to shoehorn everyone's mind into boring conformity irked me back then and I rebelled against it, of course.
Anyway, what I'm saying is the OP may be under the spell of the literary teachers who try to tell you, you should always read something specific in literary writing. You shouldn't. If you don't find anything in a piece of writing, then there wasn't anything there for you. Try somewhere else. Somewhere, someone has left something just for you. Probably. If not, oh well. Life goes on.
If I may be a bit dogmatic, I think literary writing is the polar opposite of technical writing. Technical writing must be as precise and unambiguous as possible so that every reader unerstands the same thing on reading; even if it takes careful, even painstaking reading, even if it takes a large amount of background knowledge to actually be able to understand what is written (think of difficult and convoluted mathematical proofs of theories in obscure sub-fields of which there are very few experts).
Literary writing on the other hand, fails if it invokes the same feelings and images in more than one person. Good literary writing should be different for every reader, so that the relation between the reader and the written piece becomes something unique and personal for every separate reader.
This last point is lost in the way that literature is taught at schools. At school, the teacher reads a passage from some literary work, asks the students for their interpretation, then proceeds to (more or less subtly) teach the "right" interpretation. This is horribly confusing to anyone who really likes reading exactly for the freedom to interpret everything as they like, and to form their own, their very own, emotions and images.
I remember this from high school. We were given reading assignments of books such as "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" or "The Little Prince" and then spent a couple of lectures disucssing them in the format above. For me, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was all about the society of sea birds and other animals. I remember wondering, "how do the seagulls know how an owl's mind works. How about eagles"? But the book was clearly written by an author who had an entirely different idea in mind. And it was taught by a teacher who also had a completely different one, also. But somehow everybody missed the point: we're all sweeping our eyes over the same text, but each one of us is reading a different story. This attempt to shoehorn everyone's mind into boring conformity irked me back then and I rebelled against it, of course.
Anyway, what I'm saying is the OP may be under the spell of the literary teachers who try to tell you, you should always read something specific in literary writing. You shouldn't. If you don't find anything in a piece of writing, then there wasn't anything there for you. Try somewhere else. Somewhere, someone has left something just for you. Probably. If not, oh well. Life goes on.