Do you look for something more than pleasure/inspiration in reading?

[dark desire]

In the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde wrote

All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

I want to talk about this peril. Do you look for something more than an aesthetic experience in reading? I think I do and I also think it's a mistake.

[Paulclem]

I look for good writing. I may not try to analyse it, but I know when I'm reading it, and I certainly know when I'm not.

I'm currently read A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin, and the standard of writing is excellent as his creation and depiction of the world is so very seamless and convincing.

I also look for good and new ideas and angles. For example this year I read Fatherland by Robert harris - a history book about a history that never happened set into a thriller.

A book I read last year - Surface Detail by Ian M Banks, in the course of the novel, also examined the idea of hell as a place of punishment. The Culture universe, in which the book is set, posits the fiction of a mind being stored by a computer and thus being able to access virtual worlds. Using this idea, a penal hell was created in a very Hieronymous Bosch type fashion. It's a good book looking at an old idea in a new way.

[dark desire]

It is highly perilous to look for meaning of life in literature. I think the very intent of literature is to free us from all compelling meanings that we are served. I am particularly annoyed with my mental insistence to look for the point of a book. Even as I have consciously got rid of looking for meaning out of a book, it has stayed in the deeper levels of my consciousness. Why do I look for what the author is trying to prove? It kills the pleasure of reading. I want to know if someone else is struggling with or has struggled with the same thing.

[First thoughts]

It is highly perilous to look for meaning of life in literature. I think the very intent of literature is to free us from all compelling meanings that we are served. I am particularly annoyed with my mental insistence to look for the point of a book. Even as I have consciously got rid of looking for meaning out of a book, it has stayed in the deeper levels of my consciousness. Why do I look for what the author is trying to prove? It kills the pleasure of reading. I want to know if someone else is struggling with or has struggled with the same thing.

I think it's only perilous if you're always trying to look for the same meaning in every book. As Thomas Aquinas said: "Beware the man of one book." If you read a book with your mind open to what the author is trying to suggest to you, then that can only be a good thing; by getting different perspectives and interpretations of things you free yourself from being compelled to any particular meanings and learn that there is always another way of looking at it. I don't see how looking for meaning can destroy the pleasure of reading, unless you're warping the story with your own preconcieved notions of what that meaning should be.
I wouldn't worry too much about it, if analysing a book comes naturally to you, there's no point trying to fight it.

[Paulclem]

It is highly perilous to look for meaning of life in literature. I think the very intent of literature is to free us from all compelling meanings that we are served. I am particularly annoyed with my mental insistence to look for the point of a book. Even as I have consciously got rid of looking for meaning out of a book, it has stayed in the deeper levels of my consciousness. Why do I look for what the author is trying to prove? It kills the pleasure of reading. I want to know if someone else is struggling with or has struggled with the same thing.

I associate peril with mountain climbing, rough seas and wars - definately not reading - unless I'm reading and doing those things.

Who said anything about the meaning of life? In the book I referred to - Surface Detail - I said that the author posits the fiction of a mind being uploaded onto a computer. It's a fiction, and likely to remain fiction too, but it does help to reflect upon our attitudes to hell, and our feelings about them.

It's a very interesting ending in that the Baddie - Joiler Veppers - is such a bad baddie that you begin to start wishing him into one of the hells that he "hosts" on his underground network. The author is definately playing with the reader with this because one of the other perspectives in the book is the anti hell group who try to reveal what is going on to a wider population. The book as the curious effect of placing you on both sides of the argument in which a virtual, deathless war is being fought. Not only is it a well written and interesting story, it goes the extra mile in fostering these thoughts.

Of course I might have missed that if I didn'[t want to look into what the author was doing, and it's down to personal choice. I found it very effective, and in a different league to a lot of sci fi.

[dark desire]

I associate peril with mountain climbing, rough seas and wars - definately not reading - unless I'm reading and doing those things.

Who said anything about the meaning of life?

You are as self-obsessed as I am. :D I like your book too. It looks interesting. What I said was not in reference to what you said.

[Calidore]

I look for good writing. I may not try to analyse it, but I know when I'm reading it, and I certainly know when I'm not.

I'm currently read A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin, and the standard of writing is excellent as his creation and depiction of the world is so very seamless and convincing.

I also look for good and new ideas and angles. For example this year I read Fatherland by Robert harris - a history book about a history that never happened set into a thriller.

A book I read last year - Surface Detail by Ian M Banks, in the course of the novel, also examined the idea of hell as a place of punishment. The Culture universe, in which the book is set, posits the fiction of a mind being stored by a computer and thus being able to access virtual worlds. Using this idea, a penal hell was created in a very Hieronymous Bosch type fashion. It's a good book looking at an old idea in a new way.

I've read most (I think) of Banks' Culture books, though I'm a few behind at the moment, and can highly recommend all of them.

[Paulclem]

I've read most (I think) of Banks' Culture books, though I'm a few behind at the moment, and can highly recommend all of them.

I've read them all too. They're excellent. Surface Detail has an edge, as did The Algebraist and The Player of Games.

Have you read any Neal Asher? Also excellent. Some similarities with the Culture books, but some brilliant stories.


You are as self-obsessed as I am. :D I like your book too. It looks interesting. What I said was not in reference to what you said.

That's ok. I got to talk about a book I liked. :biggrin5:

[dark desire]

First thought - I got your point. Thanks!

[kelby_lake]

Never take Oscar Wilde too seriously :P

[dark desire]

Never take Oscar Wilde too seriously :P

I totally agree. I don't think it is possible to take Oscar Wilde seriously. I just used his words for a different purpose, a different problem.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit. ~ Again Oscar Wilde :P

[LitNetIsGreat]

I also look for good and new ideas and angles. For example this year I read Fatherland by Robert harris - a history book about a history that never happened set into a thriller.

I read this last year for the same reasoning thinking that it was an interesting idea but I was very disappointed with it.


Originally Posted by kelby_lake
Never take Oscar Wilde too seriously :P

I totally agree. I don't think it is possible to take Oscar Wilde seriously. I just used his words for a different purpose, a different problem.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit. ~ Again Oscar Wilde :P

I think with Wilde the trick is to not take him seriously and to take him very seriously indeed.

Do I look for something more than pleasure in reading? I don't know, pleasure is a large aspect of it of course but I read for many different reasons I suppose depending on the context or how I'm feeling etc.

[Paulclem]

I read this last year for the same reasoning thinking that it was an interesting idea but I was very disappointed with it.



I liked it. I liked the post war successful Nazi setting and his take on it. I didn't like The Face much, but some of his other books are really good. I particularly liked Pompeii, which I found really well written. He has two books about Cicero, the Roman orator, which I also thought were great, well researched thrillers. (It's true - he makes oratory interseting).

[IntravenousJava]

Do you look for something more than an aesthetic experience in reading? I think I do and I also think it's a mistake.

Perhaps we err sometimes in expecting more from a book and thereby compromising or diminishing its aesthetic value, but having read, what we take away from a reading experience is ours to do with as we will.

[The Comedian]

I always look for a literary book to do more than just entertain. I go to literature for wisdom, humility, brotherhood, repose, danger (even of the perilous variety). . . . If all a book did was to help me kill time via an aesthetic experience well; hell, there's tons of stuff for that, stuff that I'd rather do than read a merely aesthetic story any day.