Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.
Interpretation
Reading fosters genuine interaction and understanding between the reader and the writer, rather than being merely an escape from reality.
In this quote, Jonathan Evison emphasizes that reading should not be seen merely as a way to escape from the real world, but rather as an enriching experience that connects the reader to the lives and emotions depicted in literature. A novel serves as a dialogue, where the reader engages with the text and the author's intentions, leading to a deeper understanding of human experiences and conditions.
In practice
During a book club meeting to discuss the depth of a novel's themes.
We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves.
After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men.
The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.
In golf, no one learns to hit a draw, a fade, or a cut shot until they've been taught how to hit the ball straight. Similarly, novice poker players need to learn how to 'hit it straight' before taking on more difficult concepts.
Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
I never let schooling interfere with my education.
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