Reading Response 8/31

"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, for nothing can be more fatal than to be guided by the preferences of others in a matter so personal" (Woolf 5-6).

This quote references the fact that we do not know the author's train of thought or state of mind when their piece of literature was put together. She continues to speak about how we, as the readers, are to figure that out ourselves and use our own judgment rather than others' or even the author's. We are to use our knowledge of past books, our own experiences, and whatever we need to form our own thoughts on a piece of a literature. She continues her point when she wrote, "Now then we can compare book with book as we compare building with building. But this act of comparison means that our attitude has changed; we are no longer the friends of the writer, but his judges; and just as we cannot be too sympathetic as friends, so as judges we cannot be too severe" (Woolf 9). Another point that she makes is that we need to be intellectual judges to further our minds and push ourselves to think with more complexity.

Fadiman spoke about what was important about a piece of a literature and more specifically a book. She went into the depths of the argument of whether or not the treatment of the physical book itself reflected the actual words and meaning of the text. She even began to tell personal stories when she wrote, "what would Belloc have thought of my father, who, in order to reduce the weight of paperbacks he read on airplanes, tore off the chapters he had completed and threw them in the trash?" (Fadiman 38). Does that mean her father did not appreciate what he had read but thrown away? This is the main argument that Fadiman continues throughout.

Both authors made valid points in how we need to treat and think about texts. We are to keep an open mind and be appreciative.