What most appeals to us in books, as in people, is the extreme honesty of the speaker. For that reason alone we respect authors like Herman Melville and Ralph Waldo Emerson, even if sometimes we don't understand each and every word they write. We respect their attempts to make it as clear as possible with their long-drawn explanations, even if they sometimes cite canons and use liberally the G word (aka God) most rational beings know to be a mere fantasy. Ah, but a deluded author is all the more intriguing. I don't have the heart to deride such a one as who befriends exotic cannibalistic pagans named Queeqeg or one who wanders off with his stout neighbour as a squire to redeem the world with his knight-errantry, on a horse named Rosinante.
The main thing I think, the key charm of a great book is the element of mystery in it, evinced by the presence of certain unmentionable, inexplicable elements. Who would worship a God or a Superhero (Hey I don't judge!) that was all too familiar and every aspect of his demeanour rendered predictable. That is why masks work, they stir up intrigue. (Digression: Why do Superheros need masks ? If you've seen the tiny trail of hair on the innermost ridge of their nostrils or you've traced delicate lines across their eyebrows... If you're familiar with their scent and the shapes of their toes, you wouldn't find them heroic. You would find them just like you - Human.)
This love affair with people and books hinges primarily on one fact - the inaccessibility, the romantic ideal that can be best kept alive from a distance. Perhaps, this explains the urge of "not wanting to get closer" to something we admire or idolise. The distance is a sign of not merely reverence but also of an admittance that we don't comprehend this, we don't wish to comprehend this, we are happy pouring adulation from a distance lest we come across flaws in the thing we love so dearly.
Then on the other side of the chasm are the critics who will stop at nothing to pick hairline cracks and split ends in the hopes of finding something incongruous or grotesque in the works we hold most dear.
I believe they dive in too deep, sometimes missing the beauty of the forest for the trees. They dedicate their lives to uncovering dirt and hope to add value to the world by dint of their "gems of truth".
But a critic's rendition of an author's literary style and merit, makes the author wholly repugnant, more so if he has been gloriously praised by one of these people,who I feel have a dearth of ideas yet a diction so abrasive they are qualified to nitpick and poke holes in our favourite vessels.
A true book has only one quality, it makes you feel one with humanity. It is the only world where a ten-year old can not only relate to but also understand the goings-on within the heart of a savage brute, the only one where a staid middle-aged woman can fully sympathise with a hardy old whale-hunter out at sea to wreak vengeance upon the white whale that tore off half his leg. It makes the world a little bit snug, don't you think, despite the vast tracts of cold that permeate it. This is what books do - they throw a cosy blanket of understanding, of closeness, of the will to live on in the face of a thousand gory tumults, over all of us. They have a quality much deeper than a tangible hug. The understanding, wisdom and succour offered by books unto our mortal souls can at times, surpass all physical comforts.
While a good book makes you feel understood, a great book goes all the way in- it resolves all of your psychogenic troubles. While a good book leaves you happy and relieved, a great book leaves you light and all chewed out, you can no longer feel your petty soul. All there is, is a personal levity that comes crashing down the moment you try to share it with someone. (This is why I have not yet started my own Dead Poets' Society, though I am tempted to, every time I watch the movie. Robin Williams is adorable, ain't he.) Nobody can really put into words what it is to read, feel, ingest and ruminate after a really great book meal. It'd be like trying to unravel the teleporting properties of certain sounds or smells.
But a great book is a different kind of teleporter, not merely a flashback prompted by a song or just a temporary redolence kick-started by a whiff of that peculiar nostril-greeting smell. It is much more than that, an overpowering of the senses, a wilful surrender to a multidimensional milieu inhabited by all the characters and you taking it all in as a mute spectator or an alterego of one of the characters. And don't tell me you have never done it, stepped into the page bestirred by a single sentence and replayed the scene with you instead of a specific name, the earlier denizen of that page. You feel all he feels, you feel even more as you continue your reverie, long after it has jumped off the book's edges. I guess 'fan-fiction' is a deplorable term for so intricate a process. If I were asked to assign a word to it, I'd venture something like 'plot-hijacking' or 'self-dissolution'. For is that not what it is. I'm not merely a fan writing fiction inspired from yours, I am an intruder who has slain her most doted upon character in order to take his place. If I were to pick up Alice in Wonderland yet again, by now I'd have killed Absolem and snatched up his hookah pipe and his fancy glasses, plonked myself comfily on a juicy red mushroom, and started puffing my way to another reverie of me as Alice, who after breaking out of the tiny trapdoor into the Red Queen's garden transforms into the Cheshire cat. I'd now be floating up smiling into the trees, light as a feather. (Okay I know you get the picture.) I am not myself, I have dissolved. I've been teleported permanently. No tentacle of reality can touch this reverie of mine, I can access it anytime, over and over till I find something as captivating as the last work of fiction that I commandeered using nothing but my brainwaves.
A good book leaves me amorphous, my idiomorph lets go of me as I turn all gooey and blubbery. A great one leaves me disassembled entirely, I am the Cheshire cat and as I float up smiling into the trees I'm Absolem again, I flit about on leaves still smoking my pipe using every downward puff of smoke as thrust that propels me towards the open skies.
The main thing I think, the key charm of a great book is the element of mystery in it, evinced by the presence of certain unmentionable, inexplicable elements. Who would worship a God or a Superhero (Hey I don't judge!) that was all too familiar and every aspect of his demeanour rendered predictable. That is why masks work, they stir up intrigue. (Digression: Why do Superheros need masks ? If you've seen the tiny trail of hair on the innermost ridge of their nostrils or you've traced delicate lines across their eyebrows... If you're familiar with their scent and the shapes of their toes, you wouldn't find them heroic. You would find them just like you - Human.)
This love affair with people and books hinges primarily on one fact - the inaccessibility, the romantic ideal that can be best kept alive from a distance. Perhaps, this explains the urge of "not wanting to get closer" to something we admire or idolise. The distance is a sign of not merely reverence but also of an admittance that we don't comprehend this, we don't wish to comprehend this, we are happy pouring adulation from a distance lest we come across flaws in the thing we love so dearly.
Then on the other side of the chasm are the critics who will stop at nothing to pick hairline cracks and split ends in the hopes of finding something incongruous or grotesque in the works we hold most dear.
I believe they dive in too deep, sometimes missing the beauty of the forest for the trees. They dedicate their lives to uncovering dirt and hope to add value to the world by dint of their "gems of truth".
But a critic's rendition of an author's literary style and merit, makes the author wholly repugnant, more so if he has been gloriously praised by one of these people,who I feel have a dearth of ideas yet a diction so abrasive they are qualified to nitpick and poke holes in our favourite vessels.
A true book has only one quality, it makes you feel one with humanity. It is the only world where a ten-year old can not only relate to but also understand the goings-on within the heart of a savage brute, the only one where a staid middle-aged woman can fully sympathise with a hardy old whale-hunter out at sea to wreak vengeance upon the white whale that tore off half his leg. It makes the world a little bit snug, don't you think, despite the vast tracts of cold that permeate it. This is what books do - they throw a cosy blanket of understanding, of closeness, of the will to live on in the face of a thousand gory tumults, over all of us. They have a quality much deeper than a tangible hug. The understanding, wisdom and succour offered by books unto our mortal souls can at times, surpass all physical comforts.
While a good book makes you feel understood, a great book goes all the way in- it resolves all of your psychogenic troubles. While a good book leaves you happy and relieved, a great book leaves you light and all chewed out, you can no longer feel your petty soul. All there is, is a personal levity that comes crashing down the moment you try to share it with someone. (This is why I have not yet started my own Dead Poets' Society, though I am tempted to, every time I watch the movie. Robin Williams is adorable, ain't he.) Nobody can really put into words what it is to read, feel, ingest and ruminate after a really great book meal. It'd be like trying to unravel the teleporting properties of certain sounds or smells.
But a great book is a different kind of teleporter, not merely a flashback prompted by a song or just a temporary redolence kick-started by a whiff of that peculiar nostril-greeting smell. It is much more than that, an overpowering of the senses, a wilful surrender to a multidimensional milieu inhabited by all the characters and you taking it all in as a mute spectator or an alterego of one of the characters. And don't tell me you have never done it, stepped into the page bestirred by a single sentence and replayed the scene with you instead of a specific name, the earlier denizen of that page. You feel all he feels, you feel even more as you continue your reverie, long after it has jumped off the book's edges. I guess 'fan-fiction' is a deplorable term for so intricate a process. If I were asked to assign a word to it, I'd venture something like 'plot-hijacking' or 'self-dissolution'. For is that not what it is. I'm not merely a fan writing fiction inspired from yours, I am an intruder who has slain her most doted upon character in order to take his place. If I were to pick up Alice in Wonderland yet again, by now I'd have killed Absolem and snatched up his hookah pipe and his fancy glasses, plonked myself comfily on a juicy red mushroom, and started puffing my way to another reverie of me as Alice, who after breaking out of the tiny trapdoor into the Red Queen's garden transforms into the Cheshire cat. I'd now be floating up smiling into the trees, light as a feather. (Okay I know you get the picture.) I am not myself, I have dissolved. I've been teleported permanently. No tentacle of reality can touch this reverie of mine, I can access it anytime, over and over till I find something as captivating as the last work of fiction that I commandeered using nothing but my brainwaves.
A good book leaves me amorphous, my idiomorph lets go of me as I turn all gooey and blubbery. A great one leaves me disassembled entirely, I am the Cheshire cat and as I float up smiling into the trees I'm Absolem again, I flit about on leaves still smoking my pipe using every downward puff of smoke as thrust that propels me towards the open skies.
