Read Better
Zadie Smith concludes her 15 tips on reading and writing; [part one is here].
She quotes Virginia Woolf here:
It is difficult to say, “Not only is this book of this sort, but it is of this value; here it fails; here it succeeds; this is bad; that is good”. To carry out this part of a reader’s duty needs such imagination, insight, and learning that it is hard to conceive of any one mind sufficiently endowed; impossible for the most self- confident to find more than the seeds of such flowers in himself … [Yet] even if the results are abhorrent and our judgements are wrong, still our taste, the nerve of sensation that sends shocks through us, is our chief illuminant; we learn through feeling; we cannot suppress our own idiosyncrasy without impoverishing it.
This quote now serves as a motto for my boeklog as well.
[x]#2435 fan zondag 21 januari 2007 @ 23:00:58
Woordenaar op 22 januari 2007 @ 09:31:24
Van het weekend ook gelezen, mooi artikel.