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Originally Posted by Alphapheemail
I was talking to a friend of mine and I was telling him how ever since I had the pleasure of welcoming my e-reader into my life I am devouring books ( I just started the Ender saga by Orson Scott) and I could never be happier!
He stated how he never really could understand how people read so much and he could never do it unless it was DIY books. He ended the convo by saying that he felt that people who had their noses so much in other worlds and lives were just trying to escape from their own realities.
Now, it did sound weird and somewhat true to an extent, but I still felt a bit apprehensive because I do not feel that's my main reason for reading so much.
I wanted to get the general opinion on this subject from the lovely gals and gents in this forum.
Thnx
Michelle
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Remind your friend that really good literature is an art (of course, there are good novels, and there are those which are a total waste of time.) You might quote Austen to your friend, who was largely self-taught but who probably had more knowledge and insight into the human condition, and more literate, than your friend:
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From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens,---there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no novel-reader---I seldom look into novels---Do not imagine that I often read novels---It is really very well for a novel."---Such is the common cant.---"And what are you reading, Miss ---?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.---"It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;" or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of with and humour are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
---Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey
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You can also point out to your friend articles like:
Know literature, know the world
The Fiction of Development:
Literary Representation as a Source
of Authoritative Knowledge
The latter quotes George Eliot:
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Appeals founded on generalisations and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment.
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