Doris Lessing was
conferred the 2001 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. The speech given by her is amongst the collection of essays and writings in Time
Bites by Doris Lessing.
‘There is a new kind of educated
person, who may be at school and university for twenty, twenty-five years, who
knows everything about a speciality, computers, the law , economics, politics,
but know about nothing else, no literature, art, history, and may be heard
enquiring, “But what was the Renaissance then?” “ What was the French
Revolution?"
Even 50 years ago this person
would have been seen as a barbarian. To have acquired an education with nothing
of the old humaist background-impossible. To call oneself educated without a
background of reading – impossible.
Reading , books, the literary
culture, was respected, desired, for centuries.’ – Time Bites Chapter 7
I love reading
fictions and through reading fictions, I see humanity for what it is and reading enables us to connect with
other minds across time and space. A novelist can provide a vivid description
of a situation and the psyches of various characters so that his or her readers
can possibly relate to the story and empathize with the characters, some
ordinary, some quirky. Of course
not all the readers connect with a story
in the same manner or like
the same kind of writings. Reading is a pleasure only if the writing is good.
Great writings engage our emotions and sometimes, when we immerse ourselves in
a story and reach the end of it, we wish that the story would not end.
Julian Barnes wrote in
his essay entitled :“ George Orwell and the Fucking Elephant” published in Through the Window :
‘ Most writing comes from an
inchoate process; ideas may indeed propose words, but sometimes words propose
ideas (both transactions occur within the same sentence) . As E. M. Forster, a
frequent target of Orwell’s put it (or rather, quoted).in Aspects of the Novel
: ‘ Now do I tell what I think till I see what I say?”
One of my
favourite past times is to visit a local bookstore. Whenever I have to go to Kuala Lumpur for work, nothing thrills me more than the idea
of stepping into Kinokuniya at Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC). I have to
resist the temptation to purchase too many books as carrying them back in my overnight bag may be a challenge.
In his essay
entitled “ Wharton’s The Reef”. Julian Barnes wrote :
“NOVELS CONSIST
OF words, evenly and
democratically spaced; though some may acquire higher social rank by
italicisation or capitalism. In most novels,this democracy spreads wider: every
word is as important as every other word. In better novels, certain words have
higher specific gravity than other words. This is something the better novelist
does not draw attention to, but lets the better reader discover.”
Every word and
every sentence in a novel are crafted by the author to tell a story. Every
reader has his or her own preferences for the kind of fictions he or she reads.
Reading is a solitary act. Nothing pleases me more
than being able to pick up a novel and plunge into the act of reading with undivided attention.
' FICTION IS THE MOST fundamental
human art. Fiction is storytelling, and our reality arguably consists of the
stories we tell about ourselves. Fiction is also conservative and conventional,
because the structure of its market is relatively democratic ( novelists make a
living one copy at a time, bringing pleasure to large audiences) , and because
a novel asks for ten or twenty hours of solitary attentiveness from each member
of its audience. You can walk past a painting fifty times before you begin to
appreciate it. You can drift in and out of a Bartok sonata until its structures
dawn on you. But a difficult novel just sits there on your shelf unread-unless
you happen to be a student, in which case you’re forced to turn the pages of
Woolf and Beckett.'
- How to be alone by Jonathan Franzen.
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