How to Read a Book 第14章的Genereal Rules for Reading Imaginative Literature 一節中,有不少說法可堪玩味。
例如,作者提到如何評論論說性作品時,有這個規則﹕「在你還未了解一本書之前,不要評論這本書——不要說你同意或反對這個論點。」我常常邊讀邊寫札記,難免會下一些判語,可能不時犯了這個規則呢。也管不得那麼多了,反正我一直都在自說自話而已。
再說由以上的說法,作者再作引申﹕
Don’t criticize imaginative writing until you fully appreciate what the author has tried to make you experience. (頁213)
作者很強調讀小說這類想像文學時,最好要融入作品,要受作品感動,與故事和人物休戚相關。所以作者鄭重地說﹕
The good reader of a story does not question the world that the author creates—the world that is re-created in himself….That is, we must merely appreciate the fact that a writer sets his story in, say, Paris, and not object that it would have been better to set it in Minneapolis; but we have a right to criticize what he does with his Parisians and with the city itself. ( 頁213)
不是不可批評,但不要搞錯方向。因此,作者說﹕
Before you express your likes and dislikes, you must first be sure that you have made an honest effort to appreciate the work.(同上)
自問已細意欣賞過作品,這才好表示你的喜惡。所謂欣賞,作者是另有解說的。
By appreciation, we mean having the experience that the author tried to produce for you by working on your emotions and imagination. Thus, you cannot appreciate a novel by reading it passively ( indeed, as we have remarked, you must read it passionately ) any more than you can understand a philosophical book that way. (頁213-4)
連閱讀時的心態都要改變,可見如何讀書也不是一味「認字」而已。
作者也提到一個規則,就是想文學作品無論有多短,都總有開始、過程和結束三部分。這個,似也可以套用在日常生活中。原話是這樣的﹕
One other caution: the foregoing rules apply mainly to novels and plays. To the extent that lyric poems have some narrative line, they apply to lyric also. But the rules do not cease to apply to non-narrative lyrics, although the connection is much less close. A lyric is the representation of a concrete experience , just like a long story , and it attempts to re-create that experience in the reader. There is a beginning, middle, and end of even the shortest lyric, just as there is a temporal sequence in any experience, no matter how brief and fleeting. And though the cast of characters may be very small inf a short lyric, there is always at least one character—namely, the speaker of the poem.(頁212-3)