[beppe]

Originally Posted by Ea

Perhaps that's why I'm becoming more and more sensitive to the quality of the prose because I actually notice the writing as well as the story. I think you guys who want to lose yourself in visualising, you're missing out. I, one the other hand, can just put a film in my DVD player

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

The difference, I think, is that we're reading to enjoy the story; you're reading to enjoy the text.

Very interesting point of discussion. It happens in music when there is a representative purpose in the author, like in Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev where the "story" generates images that remain ingrained in he who listens. And the niceties of the purely musical are more difficult to be perceived and appreciated. I tend to stay away from descriptive music if I am looking for a musical listenning session.

In a well crafted book the author might have thought, designed and implemented, many different "planes"(*). The story might be just one of the elements of the work, and often not the most important. the wording, the "prose" is quite frequently the most appreciated. Also an artisan capable of producing high quality prose, he is more likely to wrap it around a good story, than a good story teller that has not learned yet, or does not spend the necessary time to clean up his words, to produce something worth reading.

And what is the role of surreal writers in all this? What kind of real world images are generated by these highly appreciated artists?

I often reread. With my way of reading that is flexible in the use of imagination, as I can control the focus of my concentration (like Ea just said), I often get different images, and new gratification as different planes of the book come to my attention.

(*) Example, if you just visualize the world planes you are totally mislead. Planes are objects, concepts, have metaphorical meanings, and if you just visualize them you end up against a vertical one, quite hard. (there is a nice smiley for it in the smiles' box)