Columns: Tag – Passive
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Writing Quips and Tips
There’s nothing passive about reading
Reading is not a one-way process. It’s far more active than a writer imparting and a reader receiving.
The way to get the most from any reading experience is to accept that readers bring as much to the book as writers do.
As readers, we bring a complete psychological engagement to the task. That’s why movies of books we’ve read are never satisfying. Someone else has filled in the holes – and not as satisfyingly as we did.
Reading is construction work. The writer provides sketchy, incomplete blueprints so that each reader can build a different world.
Writer Alberto Manguel calls it the"intelligent and inspired reconstruction … using reason and imagination … to translate it on to a different canvas, extending the horizon of its apparent meaning beyond … the declared intentions of the author”.Page 1 of 1 pages