Finding the Self's Authentic Interests

In literature, writers test their theories. They play out a whole range of ideas and circumstances, evaluating scenes, actions and reactions, conversation, emotions, character traits....

Like sculptors, I suppose, writers step away from the work and examine it-asking themselves: "Does this convey what I had in mind? Does it sound good? Is the tempo pleasant to read? Is the dialogue realistic? Does that action bring that character to life? Is that emotion, given the circumstances, the one she'd actually feel?

Writers write, rewrite, and revise until the questions are satisfactorily answered-until they're able look at the work and say to themselves, like God in the book in the Genesis, "Yes, that's good. That's just the way I want it."

The story then ushers readers into a life-like world where the words -- though they're the product of the writer's imagination -- have significance and consequences, just as ours do when they're spoken to spouses, friends, and complete strangers.

Therefore, when we read a novel, we don't escape the world, we immerse ourselves in it. As we get deeper into the plot, as we come to know the characters, as we vicariously feel the tension -- we're drenched in experiences that look and feel a lot like ours.

Harold Bloom, in his book How to Read and Why quotes Samuel Johnson, the famous author and literary critic of the eighteenth century. Johnson, when talking about why we should read, said, "...what comes near to ourself [is] what we can put to use." Bloom adds Francis Bacon's famous advice: "Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider." He cites Emerson, who said that the best books "impress us with the conviction that one nature wrote and the same reads." And then, stringing these thoughts together, Bloom advises us to find what comes near-to discover what we can put to use and weigh and consider-that addresses us as though we share the one nature, "free of time's tyranny." "We read," Bloom concludes, "to strengthen the self, and to learn its authentic interests."

Richard Doster is the editor of byFaith magazine. He is also the author of two novels, Safe at Home and Crossing the Lines, both published by David C. Cook Publishers.