"Good Readers and Good Writers" by Vladamir Nabakov (1948?)

 "Good Readers and Good Writers" by Vladamir Nabakov (1948?)

Bonus: 

Summary: You gotta be an art-scientist to be a good reader.

Commentary: 

I like that Nabakov translates his French. 

In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a readymade generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.

I'm reminded of Adler's levels of reading (Analytical->Synoptical)

Also, of a discussion we had in one of my writing groups recently about "alternate Earth" vs "second world" (a term I've always hated) in fantasy. I lean towards alternate Earth, since we're sure to (consciously or subconsciously) wind up using Earth. Might as well lean into it, takes care of a lot of the worldbuilding for you. Nabakov disagrees:

Can we rely on Jane Austen’s picture of landowning England with baronets and landscaped grounds when all she knew was a clergyman’s parlor? And Bleak House, that fantastic romance within a fantastic London, can we call it a study of London a hundred years ago? Certainly not. And the same holds for other such novels in this series. The truth is that great novels are great fairy tales—and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales.

[...]

To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction.  

POP QUIZ! Which makes a good reader?

1. The reader should belong to a book club.

2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine.

3. The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle.

4. The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none.

5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie.

6. The reader should be a budding author.

7. The reader should have imagination.

8. The reader should have memory.

9. The reader should have a dictionary.

10. The reader should have some artistic sense 

(It's the last four. Which is questionable test design, but whatever.)

When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development.

I definitely like to look at little sections of a painting one at a time.

 Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature.