Slight goof: In item 80 on my "nearly 100 things" list two entries back, I mentioned a note I'd written about the way children read. Since the original list was an email to a discussion list, that reference is to something I posted there, not in this journal. But because Naomi commented on it and because it's something I feel strongly about, I'll repost it here.
Someone on the list had quoted the following from an article she'd read:
. . . "Reading, I have an eerie sensation, a bit like deja vu, or like getting in touch with a former, lost self. At the time (and maybe this has something to do with the way children read) I somehow never fully comprehended the fact that it was fiction--almost as if I imagined these girls were real people."
I responded:
!!! Almost as if she imagined! That's not the child speaking. She's writing that as an adult and I can't tell whether she really doesn't remember how it was or whether she's soft-pedaling her words to suit her readers for fear she'll be laughed at. Either way, she's not capturing the experience of a child reading. There was no "almost as if" about it. Of course I knew Jo March wasn't real in one sense any more than Santa Claus was real (remember, I'm Jewish, so I never did believe in him)or the characters on TV. But in another sense she was more real than most of the people I knew.
After all, when I talk to you, even in person, I have to guess what you're thinking; I have to read your face and listen to your voice and compare them against my experience. You may shield your thoughts from me, not necessarily from an intent to deceive but perhaps from politeness or privacy. In fact, you
certainly will shield some thoughts; none of us ever wants even the most beloved to know all we're thinking, so there is always a barrier.
With Jo March and her literary sisters and brothers, there was no barrier. I was inside their minds and I knew exactly what mattter most to them and how they
felt about it. Moreover, no matter how much the people around me seemed not to understand what mattered to me, I knew that if Jo felt as I did, then the person who created her must have understood as well or she wouldn't have been able to write Jo. That was my first proof that there were Kindred Spirits in the world, and that I wasn't alone in the important things.
I think one writer who did understand was E. Nesbit: she often has her characters scorn anyone who starts by saying, "Let's pretend we're being..." because they know that in real play you have to *be* that thing, not think of yourself as "pretending to be".
To me the ability of an author to enable a person to live as one of the characters through the whole book is a thing to treasure.
The ability of a reader to become one with one of the characters is also a treasure I think.
With some of us that doesn't disappear with age.
One reason I like books more than I do movies.
Posted by: Denver doug at March 12, 2005 01:13 AM