Advice on Reading: Become Your Author
Virginia Woolf on Immersive Reading
Welcome to Marginalia Monday, where I share entries from my personal commonplace book. This is entry #4.
Full Text - “How Should One Read a Book?” by Virginia Woolf (1932)
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) wrote two volumes of literature essays called The Common Reader. This essay comes from the Second Series. Here, Woolf elaborates on her claim that “to enjoy freedom… we have of course to control ourselves.”
Quotation 1. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticise at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read. But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this, and soon you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite.
Quotation 2. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words…. Then turn from your blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great novelist—Defoe, Jane Austen, Hardy. Now you will be better able to appreciate their mastery. It is not merely that we are in the presence of a different person—Defoe, Jane Austen, or Thomas Hardy—but that we are living in a different world. Here, in Robinson Crusoe, we are trudging a plain high road; one thing happens after another; the fact and the order of the fact is enough. But if the open air and adventure mean everything to Defoe they mean nothing to Jane Austen. Hers is the drawing-room, and people talking, and by the many mirrors of their talk revealing their characters. And if, when we have accustomed ourselves to the drawing-room and its reflections, we turn to Hardy, we are once more spun round. The moors are round us and the stars are above our heads. The other side of the mind is now exposed—the dark side that comes uppermost in solitude, not the light side that shows in company. Our relations are not towards people, but towards Nature and destiny. Yet different as these worlds are, each is consistent with itself. The maker of each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and however great a strain they may put upon us they will never confuse us, as lesser writers so frequently do, by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book.
Quotation 3. To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great fineness of perception, but of great boldness of imagination if you are going to make use of all that the novelist—the great artist—gives you.
Quotation 4. This, then, is one of the ways in which we can read these lives and letters; we can make them light up the many windows of the past; we can watch the famous dead in their familiar habits and fancy sometimes that we are very close and can surprise their secrets, and sometimes we may pull out a play or a poem that they have written and see whether it reads differently in the presence of the author. But this again rouses other questions. How far, we must ask ourselves, is a book influenced by its writer’s life—how far is it safe to let the man interpret the writer? How far shall we resist or give way to the sympathies and antipathies that the man himself rouses in us—so sensitive are words, so receptive of the character of the author? These are questions that press upon us when we read lives and letters, and we must answer them for ourselves…
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Woolf argues that coming to a text with certain preconceptions hurts our understanding and enjoyment of reading. Instead, “Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticise at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read.” What merit is there in withholding judgment during a first read? What type of relationship do we develop with the author? (Q1)
Why does Woolf suggest writing (“make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words…”) as a way to better understand what we read? What virtue is she trying to cultivate in the contrast between our “blurred and littered pages” and the work of a great novelist? (Q2)
How does Woolf describe the worlds of Defoe, Austen, and Hardy? If you’ve read these works, are her descriptions accurate? How would you apply her metaphor of landscape to your favorite authors? (Q2)
As an aside, this is the point where this essay gripped me. It’s obvious that Woolf loves and respects these authors, and I can’t help but feel kinship with anyone who thinks of literature in this way!
“The maker of each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and however great a strain they may put upon us they will never confuse us, as lesser writers so frequently do, by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book.” - How does Woolf distinguish between great and lesser authors? Do you see this distinction in your own reading? (Q2)
Woolf claims that you need both “great fineness of perception” and “great boldness of imagination” to read well. What is the contrast between these two skills? How are they cultivated in the reader? (Q3)
Speaking of the reader’s interest in the “lives and letters” of famous authors, Woolf asks, “How far, we must ask ourselves, is a book influenced by its writer’s life—how far is it safe to let the man interpret the writer?” As someone who enjoys reading about authors in this way (particularly Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë), I merely echo this question for our reflection as well. (Q4)
More from this essay:
Part 3. Advice on Reading: Judge Your Author (Coming November 17)
Bene lege!