How To Read Literary Fiction - Literary Surrender

The key thing people miss when reading literary fiction. And the pleasure of slowing down.

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[Jaspagion]

i don't agree on the movie argument. You can watch a lot of movies in a deep way. A lot of movies need to be watched not only for enjoyment.

[zenmarais]

When you tackle a non-fiction book, which can doubtlessly be difficult, it is often more straightforward. You simply need to understand what the words literally mean, and any underpinning concepts, to gain meaning.

Whereas with fiction, you cannot rely on certainty to extract meaning. The so-called "ineffable" beauty of literature is often found in its transference of meaning through the inherent ambiguity and uncertainty of language - for example, metaphors are indirectly telling. Some fiction books that rely heavily on imputation - such as Bram Stocker's Drucula - can be especially testing on the mind. A character may be doing one thing, and then suddenly another, but the author writes with the expectation that the reader can see what has happened to transition between the scenes without actually telling you. In Dracula, this effort is compounded because John Harker's mental states are seldom told directly at all. Stephen King, in my opinion, is a master at guiding the reader in this way. A simpler example of this is tone. We have all read dialogue only to be hit by a phrase that feels as if it breaks the flow of the conversation entirely, and then we feel stupid for finding that it is not the author who broke our immersion, but us the reader for not reading the character with the correct tone.

But these hiccups are not necessarily due to headlessness on the author's nor reader's part. It is mostly down to reading ability - which is equivalent to learning. As the operations of learning performed while reading are identical to those performed when learning anything in nature. Indeed, we would not have been able to invent writing/reading in the first place without some inborn ability to excavate 'meaning' from external objects, would we? With this in mind, we did not start reading after the invention of writing, we have always been reading. Reading the footprints of prey, the tracks of an enemy, and now we are trying to read for signs of life on other planets. Writing is the vessel for delivering what is meant. This is why reading actually makes you smarter, and anyone who reads demandingly would agree, and would know the pleasure of finding a book that makes you feel way in over your head; because if you manage to understand a book you could not to begin with, you know that you have elevated your ability to learn generally. So the answer is to just keep reading!

A good book to read is "How to Read A Book" - by Mortimer J. Adler, he explains these "operations of learning" in reading at a much higher level.

[mohamadkebbewar]

Great point about surrendering yourself to fiction. I’m reading the sound and the fury by Faulkner. It’s sooo tough to read.

[SA-xvkv]

Yess! You are so right.... Glad I found your

[JimTempleman]

With your minimalism & surrendering yourself into the experience: you’re very Zen!
It’s interesting that your approach to reading literary fiction mirrors the meditative state of mind. And I suspect that you come closer to ‘getting the point’ than the majority of mindfulness meditators, who remain at the surface level of their experience.

[Myna.bird.asmaa.alhosani]

That’s such a beautiful thought. To surrender to someone else’s life.

[henriquemarques]

Hi R.C Waldon!
Im a huge fan of the content of your videos and how well informed i got out after wacthing you! Please make a video on how to read to better your vocabulary and have a great fluent speaking, what should you read to better that what thecniques exercises etc .thanks

[mesbahulalam]

You're doing great work. I think our taste in literature align. I would very much like you to put up more videos on literary fiction. Good day!

[isha]

You are the first person I’ve seen talking about such a process. The way you describe immersing into the text, surrendering to it makes me realise how shallow mainstream reading is. It is about bragging rights, because why else would anyone spend hours on a book anyway these days(?!) Thank you for these videos, and I’ll keep coming back to these every once in a while to remind myself why I read and what it means.

[ghostfacedude]

Don't hurry through a book. It'll never be as exciting and enjoyable than the first read through. I like to take my time and take it in.

[forfreedomssake]

Transformative Experience. Yes. Interesting. Thank you

[hakanmagnusson]

Hi R.C Waldon!
I love your channel. I have a question on a book. What book is standing on top of the right shelf with a mans face on it? :)
Greetings from Sweden

[ahappyperson]

Hi. Firstly, nice Chemistry T - Shirt xD. I have finished reading "The Pilgrimage" one time and intend to re-read it. Have you read this book before?
Thank you for sharing your experience. I do love the idea of slowing down with regard to reading.

[krishnathapa]

Please read some books by Zola .
Those are genuinely masterpiece ..

[aichahm]

Hi I am new subscriber i love your videos ❤❤

[watafau_lover]

I watched this while waiting to pick up Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, which I ordered few days ago, and I'm really glad I stumbled upon this. Would've hated to read No Longer Human "wrongly" and then be disappointed by it, especially since I haven't really read literary fiction before. But after watching this I feel more confident about reading literary fiction ^^

[moomeghana]

I'm a bit confused. In one of your videos, you suggested that we skim over (read difficult books quickly) so that we know the overview of the book, and later, we can re-read it for detail. However, here you say to take your time to process and understand the depth and meaning of the writing?

[marta_blud]

I love Dostoievsky, it puts you in an uncomfortable place of human existence 🤍