Re: Good Readers and Good Writers Discussion

[Carly Mendisco]

In his article, "Good Readers and Good Writers", Nabokov goes over a broad spectrum of theories and aspects of proper literary structures. For the Good Reader portion, he stated that in order to be a good reader, one must be able to reread and without rereading, one could never truly be a "Reader". He also gave the example that with reading over something only one time, the reader cannot fully grasp what the author's intentions were in the book. That made me think personally of my own reading experiences, and I agree with him. I have a few choice novels I like to reread (and say I'm an expert on), but when it comes to books that I had only read once, I couldn't even remember the best parts, despite liking the book so much! While reading novels, it's better to go over points in the book that are confusing, so that the overall experience with the book is better and leaves no stone unturned.

[Carly Mendisco]

To be an exceptional Writer, Nabokov says that the author should take three points of view - "as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter" - and combine all of them throughout the book. Using just one of these aspects can leave the reader uninterested and be the downfall of a potentially good novel. In writing, the author should also use a lot of imagery and sensory details in order to connect its readers to the characters and plots in the story. This made me think of my writing and how it could be improved. When writing, I feel like I I'm mostly just the storyteller and the enchanter because I use a lot of sensory detail so that my reader can imagine being there when the story took place. On the other hand, I feel like I need to improve on being a teacher because I don't really provide a basis of knowledge to the reader like Nabokov says to. After reading his article, I feel like both my reading AND writing skill will improve in the long run if I follow his easily comprehensible advice.