Through the process of our reflective imaginations we make stuff up, and the stuff we make up is somehow germinated by the text(s) of the world. How do you think this connects to the evocative comment of Ben Okri’s revisionary Don Quixote, when he says in Okri’s story that he ‘reads with the soles of his feet’?
I take this to mean that one can immerse in reading in a whole way; that no body part is left out when a reader gives over to a narrative. No body part is too lowly to enlist in the act. When a reader immerses entirely, the narrative becomes their own and then they can germinate those worlds, characters, morals, journeys and sense-making structures into their own world view. Everything they “create” after that is informed by their entire being.
Did Okri’s story have you thinking about what type of reader you are? This might be a good time to reflect on that.
I go in hard. I get immersed. I fall in love with the characters and the world that the author has built. I feel all the feels and I feel them deeply. I don’t analyze while I read. I go all in on the journey the author is taking me on.
When I was reading The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan I did have a crisis of faith. I was so confronted and troubled by where he was taking me that I had to look him up online. I needed to make sure that we were values-aligned. Once I approved of his values, or my perception of their goodness, I was straight back to work devouring the book. Using some of Don Qixote’s styles I would say my most common are:
- Wistfully like a traveller
- Magically like a shaman
- Glancingly like a journalist
- Speedily like a bright young fool
And to those I would add:
- Coalesced like a lover
- Obsessed like a solipsist
Please feel free to share with us here any thoughts you might have on what type of reader you are and whether the focus of this first module has helped you understand your own reading and writing processes a little better.
So far I have only written non-fiction. I definitely think the content of this module has helped me to understand my own writing process. It has given me a lot of hope that perhaps I could write fiction.
Previous to this module I thought that my non-fiction writing was a mix of other people’s ideas and summaries of my observations. Now, objectively, I can see how my non-fiction writing was not “my ideas and their ideas”. It was all informed by all that has come before but through my own lens.
My reading process feels like such an immersive, instinctual, intuitive process. I don’t know if it has been influenced by the focus of the module. I may become aware of the influence of these new ideas as I read in the future. I am currently trying to enhance my wreading. I do tend to get lost in the magic of it all which I love. I would rather not taint my escapism with my analytical mind.
Bold text indicates the prompts provided in ALL705 at Deakin university by Dr Gregory Day. The regular font indicates my responses.
References
ALL705 Vision and Revision – Short Stories Now at Deakin University, 2024
Dr Gregory Day
Professor David Mccooey
Don Quixote and The Ambiguity of Reading, a chapter in Lunatic, lovers & poets: twelve stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare by Ben Okri, 2016