Serious Pleasure

My first love was music.  As a boy I played the piano every day, and I was lucky to find a teacher that skillfully introduced me to the great classical composers. When I lost myself in their worlds, I was happier and more fully engaged than I ever was in my own.  I also studied music theory early on, so I acquired a vocabulary that helped me understand that music. As a young adult I became deeply immersed in the world of music theory; understanding how it all worked was just as important to me as experiencing the music itself.

Though I always read fiction, I never got the same guidance in that field.  Public school English classes were a joke, and in college those discussions of literature just didn't work for me.  I wasn't ready for it. Paradoxically, verbal language was imprecise for me; music was specific. Not to equate myself in any way with Felix Mendelssohn, but he wrote:

"People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. These, too, seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite."

Hence the title of Wendy Lesser's Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books jumped out at me.  I had to give it a try. And I wasn't disappointed.  In music I can understand pretty well not only what a composer actually did, but I can also be aware of the alternatives he rejected.  And that can make it so much more meaningful: to witness the specificity of his intent.  Lesser's book opened that door for me a bit in literature. She discusses some very basic issues: the author's voice, the space between the reader and the writer, innovation, authority, grandeur and intimacy, etc.  She covers many genres and styles.  For this literary amateur the discussion was enlightening if a bit scattered.  The proof of the pudding is that reading has changed for me. I am more aware of what the author is doing (or at least what I think he's doing).  There's a level of discourse in which I'm watching myself experience the writing, and that changes the experience.  It's almost like being part of the editorial process, seeing the finished work emerge from the unformed block of marble.  I've always been able to do that in music, and to get a glimmer of that insight in literature is exciting for me.

I'm certain that his book is not for everyone.  For many her 'insights' are self-evident; for others irrelevant. As for me, I'm a better reader now.