How Should One Read a Book

32 英美散文学习与赏析 English Essays: Reading, Learning, and Appreciation
Activity 1
Think about the following questions, and write down your answers before reading the essay ・
(1) When you happen to stay with a stranger, for example, another passenger sitting next to you on a train
over a long haul, which are you more likely to do, to initiate talks, or to wait for him or her to do so? How would they be different?
(2) Further imagine how you would remember your train ride. Would it be the sum of all of the bits, or would
it be a series of episodes that do not perfectly connect?
(3) When you read a book, is it like conversing with a stranger? When you finish reading a book, how do you
remember whatever you can remember from your reading?
Activity 2
Read the essay, and fill in each of the blanks with one word only.
Our minds should be kept ________when we start reading a book: we should be more willing to take what the author ________to give us. As to a great novel, it always shows a different world which is nonetheless ______with itself. Therefore, to move from one great novel to another, we may experience the great ________ between differing realities.
How Should One Read a Book?Virginia Woolf
It is simple enough to say that since books have classes —
fiction, biography, poetry —we should separate them and take from each what it is right that each should give us. Yet
few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred' and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that
it shall be false, of biography that it shall be fiattering, of
history that it shall enforce 2 our own prejudices.
1 If something blurs an idea or a distinction between things, that idea or distinction no longer seems clear.
2 To enforce something means to force or
cause it to be done or to happen.202"英语
学习
133If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that
would be an admirable begirming. Do not dictate to 3 your author;
try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and jcconiplicc. If you
hang back 4, and reserve and criticise at first, you are preventing
yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you
read. But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs
and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and
turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a
human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint
yourself with this, and soon you will find that your author is
giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more
defi n ite.
The thirty-two chapters of a novel —if we consider how to read
a novel first —are an attempt to make something as formed and
controlled as a building; but words are more impalpable than
bricks, reading is a Ion g er and more complicated process tha n
seeing. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements
of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make
your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words.
Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on
you —how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two
people talking. A tree shook; an electric light danced; the tone
of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an entire
conception, seemed contained in that moment.
But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find
that it breaks into a thousand conflicting impressions. Some must
3 If someone dictates to someone else, they tell them what they should do or can do.
4 If you hang back, you move or stay slightly behind a person or group, usually because you are nervous about something.
5 To subdue something, e.g., feelings, means to make it less strong.
be subdued ; others emphasized; in the process you will lose,
probably, all grasp upon the emotion itself. Then turn from your
blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great 2027.7
英语学习
34英美散文学习与赏析English Essays:Reading,Learning,and Appreciation
novelist—Defoe,Jane Austen,Hardy.Now you will be better able
to appreciate their mastery.
s It is not merely that we are in the presence of a different person—Defoe,Jane Austen,or Thomas Hardy—but that we are living in
a different world.Here,in Robinson Crusoe,we are trudging a
plain high road;one thing happens after another;the fact and the order of the fact is enough.But if the open air and adventure mean everything to Defoe they mean nothing to Jane Austen.Hers is the drawing-room,and people talking,and by the many mirrors of their talk revealing their characters.And if,when we have accustomed ourselves to the drawing-room and its reflections,we turn to Hardy,we are once more spun round6.The moors are round us and the stars are above our heads.The other side of the mind is now exposed—the dark side that comes uppermost in solitude,not the light side that shows in company.Our relations are not towards people,but towards Nature and destiny.
□Yet different as these worlds are,each is consistent with itself.
The maker of each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective,and however great a strain7they may put upon us they will never confuse us,as lesser writers so frequently do,by
6To spin somebody round/
around is to turn them very
quickly to face the opposite
direction.
7If you say that a situation is a strain,you mean that it makes you worried and tense.
introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book.Thus
to go from one great novelist to another—from Jane Austen to
Hardy,from Peacock to Trollope,from Scott to Meredith—is to
be wrenched and uprooted;to be thrown this way and then that.
To read a novel is a difficult and complex art.You must be capable
not only of great fineness of perception,but of great boldness of
imagination if you are going to make use of all that the novelist—
the great artist—gives you.fg
2021.1英语学习
35
Activity3
Read the essay again,and answer the following questions.
(1)According to the author,what can fiction,poetry,biography,and history NOT generally do?(para.1)
(2)What does"accomplice”probably mean in the essay?(para.2)
(3)How should one begin making their own experiment with the dan g ers and difficulties of words?(para.3)
(4)Why will we be better able to appreciate the masterpieces after we try making our own experiment with
words?(para.4)
(5)Why does what means everything to Defoe mean nothing to Jane Austen?(para.5)
(6)Why do we also need great boldness of imagination to read a great novel?(para.6)
Activity4
Study the words in bold and the underlined phrases and/or expressions・Complete the
blank-filling task below・
(1)He forced himself to s________and overcome his fears.
(2)I sometimes find it a s_______to be responsible for the mortgage.
(3)David is now living in Beirut again after an e________absence.
(4)Some scientists are trying to b________the distinction between“how"and"why”questions.
(5)He didn't seem to pay attention to her,so she____him____to face her.
(6)I saw him step forward momentarily but then________,nervously massaging his hands.
(7)Why should anyone________parents on how to raise their children?
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参考文献
Battestin, M. C. 1961. IntroductionEA]. Joseph Andrews. By Henry Fielding.
Boston ： Houghton Mifflin Company.
Bueler, L. E. 1994. Clarissa's PlotsW. Newark ： University of Delaware
Press.Fielding, H . 1 973. Tom Jones ：
Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds
and Sources, Criticism^']. Ed. Sheridan Baker. New York ： W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Fielding, H. 1987. An Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters
of Men [A]. Joseph Andrews with Shame la and Related Writings ： Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds
and Sources, Criticism. Ed. Homer Goldberg. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Golden, M. 1966. Fielding's Moral Psychology^}. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.Hatfield, G. W. 1967. The Serpent and the Dove ： Fielding's Irony dnd
the Prudenee Theme of "Tom
Jones" [J]. Modern Philology, 65(1): 17—32
Maioli, R. 2015. Empiricism and Henry Fielding's Theory of Fiction[JJ.Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 27(2)： 201—228Miller, H. K. 2017. Essays on Fielding Mi s ee Hanies^']. Prin ceton ： Princeton University Press.亨利・菲尔丁 . 1957.约瑟夫・安德鲁斯的
经历[M].王仲年，译.上海：新文
艺出版社.方芳，北京大学英语系博士生。

Activity 2
open; attempts / tries; consistent; shift
Activity 3
(1) In general, fiction cannot be true; poetry cannot be false; biography cannot be flattering; history cannot enforce our own prejudices.
(2) Someone's accomplice is a person who helps them to commit a crime. Here it means a comrade.
(3) They should begin by recalling their impressions which are episodic and concrete.
(4) Because we will be better aware of the difficulties of reconstructing impressions in words.
(5) Because they have reconstructed two different worlds in their works.
(6) Because to fully appreciate a great novel, it requires courage and even bravery for us to step out of our own “habit ” of perception.
Activity 4
(1) subdue
(2) strain
(3) enforced
⑷ blur
(5) spun ... round
(6) hang back
(7) dictate to
2021.1英语学
习。