HOW SHOULD ONE READ A BOOK- (ON READING BOOKS)
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
was a famous novelist and critic of the twentieth century. Her famous novels
are Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando. She is also well known
for her essays A Room of One’s Own, and The Second Common Reader
. She employed “Stream of Consciousness“ a fictional technique in her novels. Stream of Conscious Technique
is a mode of narration that involves the full spectrum and continuous flow of a
character’s mental process. Woolf
suffered from poor mental health and committed suicide in 1941.
Dongari Mallaiah, also known as Ampasayya Naveen, was the first to use this narrative mode in telugu literature in his novel Ampasayya
Woolf
recommendations on how to read a book
The present
essay “On Reading Books” is taken from The Second
Common Reader written by Virginia
Woolf.
The essayist
urges the readers to separate the books as they have classes in literature such
as fiction, biography, auto biography
and memoirs and get the right value from them. Most of the readers read
books with blurred and divided minds. She suggests readers not to read with
preconception. The reader should not dictate to the author or tell him, what he must write. Try to understand the author and be his fellow worker.
Reader has to open his mind widely to get minute things and twists in the book.
Woolf compares 32 chapters of a novel to a big building. She opines that
reading is a longer and more complicated process than seeing. To understand the
novelist she urges us not to read but to write our experiences in life, which
may be comic or tragic. Then the reader understands the hard work of an author.
Woolf suggests us
to turn our mind from our book to the opening pages of some great novelists
like Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy . All the three belong to
different worlds. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is a travel narrative. Open
air and adventure signify much to Defoe but they have no meaning to Jane
Austen. Jane Austen world is domestic world. She draws her characters from real
life. The theme of her novels is matrimony. Main ingredients of her novels are
drawing room conversations, dances weddings and love. Her famous novels are Pride
and Prejudice, Mansfield park and Emma. Whereas Thomas Hardy is associated with
pessimism,fate nature and tragedy. (Hardy novels The Mayor of Casterbridge,
Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure). If the reader
wants to make use of all that the
novelist gives, he must capable of great
imagination.
Some refuse to
read Biographies and autobiographies stating they are not work of art. The
essayist opines that biographies and auto biographies are equally important as
fiction and poetry. Woolf says that we must remain readers but not as critics. Reader has his own importance and responsibility.
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