Good Readers and Good Writers Analysis

After mentioning the list of good readers, Nabokov says that we need to really immerse ourselves into the book, and “we have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting.” (7) He makes a reference to how paintings are easy to “fondle” over the details of. However, reading is considered an art in this context. At first, we’re all focused on the plot and actually figuring out the story. But once we reread a book, we may understand the deeper meanings and pick up on some small yet important details we missed out on the first time. Connecting on how readers should understand the rhetor’s message, Nabokov mentions how we should actually be detached when reading towards the end of the passage. He also states that it is most meaningful when “we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass.” (17) I find this to be just…wow, it was a wonderful metaphor. The way I saw this was that at first we see the story as simply fiction, which represents the castle of cards. It is fake and very superficial. But once we read, immerse ourselves, and (perhaps most importantly) reread, the text somehow becomes real to us. This comes from the teamwork of both the author’s artistic sense and the reader’s imagination (and vice versa, according to Nabokov). The feeling and thinking that should occur when reading is crucial because it makes the reading much more meaningful and satisfying, like being part of the author’s world, which can be extraordinarily exhilarating. Something I found most interesting in the passage was when he explained when “literature was born not the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valet with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a