Neal's Yard Covent Garden |
Maybe one of the
primary reasons we read a work of
fiction is to escape into another world, a world that is created by the
writer. To me reading fictions gives me an insight to the human heart, our
heritage and the world. Different writings provide me with different types
of food for thought.
Reading is
definitely continuing education and I cannot emphasize enough the pleasure of
reading fictions. Books may not offer the reasons for why we are here, books do
offer us some tips on how to live our lives. Great writings help to interprete
life.
Have you heard
of the reading bug? I think if
someone in your family is a reader, chances are you will
be infected with the bug. But in this electronic age where there are various types of home entertainment and portable devices, it is probably more conducive to get on the social network and catch up with friends or slouch in front of a television or a game station instead of curling up in a chair and read.
be infected with the bug. But in this electronic age where there are various types of home entertainment and portable devices, it is probably more conducive to get on the social network and catch up with friends or slouch in front of a television or a game station instead of curling up in a chair and read.
When we read, we
tend to interprete the writings according to what we already know or what we
think we know. Personally I feel limited by my way of thinking so I try to read
with a view to explore new ideas and different ways of assessing certain
issues. If I could possess a photographic memory, I would be an omnivore as I am interested in
such a lot of things and would
love to read, study and generally
absorb all the information. Since I have only an average power of memory, I
have to be selective and prioritize what I really want to read about from time
to time.
If we constantly
interprete what we read according to what we know, it may not help us grow and may even be counter productive
. If we do not read with an open mind, we may not exactly nourish our minds
since we are reinforcing what we think we already know. Reading is supposed to
help one think and reinvent and possibly reconsider and reexamine issues and
priorities in life, but if one has already made up his or her mind about how
things should be, reading will only make him or her reiterate what he or she
thinks.
In The Marriage Plot written
by the Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey
Eugenides, Mitchell Grammaticus who is attracted to Christian
mysticism lugs along with him books
as he travels the world to
get Madeleine Hanna out of his mind. During his travel to India, he finds
himself confronting the questions about the meaning of life, the existence of
God, and the true nature of love. An English major college student, Madeleine
falls for Leonard Bankhead, a loner who is bad news and when she is heartbroken, she keeps the book A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes
close by. Eugenides wrote “She had become an English major
for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.”
It was the
morning of her college graduation, there were all those books in the room where
Madeleine lay, with a pillow over her head. The story begins with this
description:
‘To start with, look at all the
books. There were her Edith Wharton novels, arranged not by title but date of
publication; there was the complete Modern Library set of Henry James, a gift
from her father on her twenty-first birthday; there were the dog-eared
paperbacks assigned in her college courses, a lot of Dickens, a smidgen of
Trollope, along with good helpings of Austen, George Elliot, and the
redoubtable Bronte sisters. There were a whole lot of black-and-white New
Directions paperbacks, mostly poetry by people like H.D. or Denise Levertov.
There were the Colette novels she read on the sly…………..
‘She had read
each and everyone ,often multiple times , frequently underlining passages, but
that was no help to her now.’
‘She was glad
she’d taken the book. Now, in her morose condition, the elegant prose of Roland
Barthes was her one consolation. Breaking up with Leonard hadn’t lessened the
relevance of A Lover’s Discourse one bit. There were more chapters about
heartbreak than happiness, in fact. One chapter was called “Dependency.”
Another, “ Suicide.” Still another, “In Praise of Tears.” The amorous subject has a
particular propensity to cry ….The slightest amorous emotion, whether of
happiness or of disappointment, brings Werther to tears. Werther weeps often,
very often, and in floods. Is it the lover in Werther who weeps, or is it the
romantic.’
‘A Lover’s
Discourse was the perfect cure for lovesickness. It was a repair manual for the
heart, its one tool the brain. If you used your head, if you became aware of
how love was culturally constructed and began to see your symptoms as purely
mental , if you recognized that being “in love’ was only an idea, then you
could liberate yourself from its tyranny. Madeleine knew all that. The problem
was , it didn’t work. She could read Barthes’ deconstructions of love all day
without feeling her love for Leonard diminish the teeniest little bit . The
more of A Lover’s Discourse she read, the more in love she felt. She recognized
herself on every page. She identified with Barthes’ shadowy “I”. She didn’t want
to be liberated from her emotions but to have their importance confirmed. Here was a book addressed to lovers, a
book about being in love that contained the word love in just about every
sentence. And,oh, how she loved it!’
The heroine Madeleine is evidently a bibliophile and an incurable
romantic. Incidentally, I came across the essay entitled ‘The Second Shelf” written by one of my favourite female writers, Meg Wolitzer on the rules of literary fictions for men and women. Here is Wolitzer’s opening sentence,
“If “The Marriage Plot,” by Jeffrey Eugenides, had been written by a woman yet still had the same title and wedding ring on its cover, would it have received a great deal of serious literary attention?”*
I feel that categorizing the book genre is for easy marketing of the book, ultimately good writings would find their readers. The story is set in the early 1980s when the country was in a recession, somehow it seemed self-indulgent for the heroine to fall hopelessly in love despite all the warning signs about the guy she was in love with. I cannot say for certain whether the character is an incurable romantic by reason of the books she has read. Perhaps she is an incurable romantic to begin with, thus her selection of books. I think the great thing about being young is that you can be foolhardy without regard to consequences and how romantic love can make you feel needy and heavy. The Marriage Plot makes an engaging read if you are a romantic at heart although it does not have a Hollywood kind of ending. After all books remain books, reading fictions is a perfect getaway and it should be very safe just you and your books.
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