Vladimir Nabokov
Good Readers and Good Writers
In this lecture, Nabokov is telling us what he believes (his
view) to be the ‘makeup’ of good readers and good writers. While I, for the most part, agree with what
he is telling us here, I must say that I have not researched the topic of good
readers and good writers to know if, in fact, this constitutes the entirety on
the subject.
Nabokov, with a great sense of flare and descriptive details
tells us that one must possess an imagination, a memory, a dictionary, and some
artistic sense. He then correlates this
with his ideas that a good writer should be considered a combination of a storyteller,
a teacher and an enchanter. I believe
that you cannot have one without the other.
By that I mean if the writer cannot grasp ones’ imagination and artistic
sense through his storytelling and enchanting abilities, then it does not
matter if one possesses a memory or a dictionary because the lesson is not
going to be learned. For me a writer
must grab my attention in the first few pages or all is lost and I am just
going through the motions of reading and not enjoying the overall magical
experience of reading. Because of that,
I think that I must be missing some or part of the qualities (imagination
maybe) for me to consider myself a good reader.
That is where I get lost as to label myself a bad reader or a good reader. If I am not interested by the end of the first chapter I cannot bring myself to continue reading the story. In my feedback I related it to having to be interested in what you are reading. So does a good reader always have to be interested and enjoy the reading no matter what the topic is? Or can you be a good reader when it comes to only things that interest you? I guess I may be a bad reader after all. ha
ReplyDeleteI too can not focus on the material if it's not interesting at the start. I usually start to get an interest in the material after a few pages but I have to go back to the beginning re-read it.
ReplyDeleteI like the point you made about not researching the topic, and whether Nabokov's description of a "good reader" should label you as a good or bad reader. I do believe that for the most part he made some important points about what a good reader is. Although I do not agree with all of them. I am also the complete same and if the beginning of a book does not capture my attention then I will not read it, or continue reading without any interest and become bored and not engaged what so ever. And that's what is important about being a good writer, is to get your reader hooked and interested in the first couple of sentences/paragraphs. I think overall Nabokov did a good job giving descriptive details about what being a good writer is.
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