Hence reading is self-mastery, because the self (and its affirmations) are held in check while the author (and his structures of thought) are fully attended to. ...
If reading is the key to self-mastery, fiction is the master key. Those like Hanson and Hitchens, who invite disagreement, are good too. But fiction demands that you either identify with the characters’ decisions or distance yourself from them, and this has a powerful effect. In doing so you shape your own moral experience. Although it may seem to be far removed from the center of the culture right now, fiction remains the best form of reading — the single best way to achieve all of reading’s goods.
In this there are at least three major problems. First, it presumes that 'reading fiction' is identical to 'close reading of a text.' Not all texts benefit from or are capable of receiving this type of close reading, nor do readers always approach texts in this way (nor is it always smart to do so--Dickens may have been paid by the word, but that doesn't mean you should read them all). The hidden intervening term in this discussion, as in so many others about reading, is that of course the texts involved a Classics or Great Books and so worthy of close attention.
The second is with this idea that the purpose of reading fiction is to provide ethical education, that the point of a novel is the decisions made by the characters which one must react to. And the great books do pose important, relevant ethical questions to us all, for example: What do I do if the nominal leader of my war party attempts to take the female prisoner I would like to rape so he can rape her instead? How do I best react when the woman I was in love with sends a famous poet to guide me through hell? What are the proper ways to act if I would like to be a knight even though there's no knighting activity for me to take part in? etc. This is not to deny that the ethical aspect of any of these works or others might not be worthwhile, but it's a strangely utilitarian view of the importance of literature. In this sense, it's not unlike the view that the value of the food one eats is not in how it tastes, but in its ability to provide the correct balance of nutrients.
Third, it is improperly dismissive of the value of postmodern ways of reading. As I have found, and as Zadie Smith suggests in her essay "Rereading Barthes and Nabokov" (where, n.b., she comes out on Nabokov's side in the end), the ideal combination for a reader is somewhere in the middle--a text that has stability and permanence in its form, but one which does not lean too heavily on the all-seeing, all-knowing Author. If there's one thing I have always found implausible about Strauss' "Persecution and the Art of Writing," it's the idea that the author can control his meaning so well that all the 'mistakes' are intentional and there are no other mistakes. Postmodern ways of reading are a useful reminder that language is a tool, and like any other tool it can be used better or worse.
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