Reading a book is like looking through a window into the writer’s soul. Other art forms afford the same view, but no other art forms offer the same engrossing view; text involves the reader to a much greater degree than film involves the viewer or music involves the listener because text invites the active involvement of the reader–the reader must mentally engage, must fire up the engines of the imagination in order to construct cerebral pictures of characters and settings and action.
Some windows offer delightful glimpses of hope and beauty and a true nobility of soul. Other windows offer darkness. You must understand that darkness is a place, not necessarily just a lack of light. The lack of light is bad enough as it is, but when you find darkness in a soul, you find a dangerous thing of grasping, cold hunger, a thing that bleeds color out of life. When you have finished looking, you might glance up to find that there are other things standing silent by you, things drawn across the waste (for such houses are only built in wastes) by the hint of cold light shining through the shutters. And when they have finished looking, perhaps they will turn to look at you…
“Shudders” is right. That’s not disturbing at all…
However, I would say that reading *some* books is like looking through a window into a writer’s soul. Others (perhaps even the majority) are more like looking through a window at the shop display behind it, to a depth of about two feet. A set piece, showing faceless plastic mannequins in predetermined unmoving poses. A great lot of formula fiction is like that. I don’t think I got deep glimpses into Enid Blyton’s soul, reading one after the other of her “Mallory Towers” books when I was a kid…
Hmm. That’s an interesting angle. You’re right. Great way to put it: plastic mannequins in unmoving poses. There’s probably a couple brutal essays hiding in this topic.