Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure Of Books - Plot & Excerpts
It may be located in places as small as the sentence, or even the individual word; it may govern entire relationships—among characters, between character and author, between author and reader. It may be a purely metaphorical absence, or it may involve an actual cut or deletion. But it is always there. Sometimes the severance, the gap, is built into the authorial strategy itself. Dickens is a master of this. His most memorable characters seem to possess detachable parts—salient characteristics which, in taking on a life of their own, come eventually to represent the whole personality. The less realistic these humorously exaggerated characters are, the more they are prone to demonstrating a single, representative quality that exists apart from themselves. Yet in some ways these distinctive habits, always practiced to excess, are the most realistic thing about these people, for it is precisely in their notable excrescences that we are likely to recognize ourselves. Hardly a year ever passes, for instance, without my recalling Mr.
What do You think about Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure Of Books?
