Connections
The Call: Closed Circuits — Cheryl
A long time ago, in what seems like a different life, I wrote a post (or two) on my homeschooling blog about conversations among books and readers. I was able to find an excerpt that seems especially pertinent to the connections I’m experiencing now, as everything I read seems to relate to everything else I read and all of it feeds my creative fires. (The excerpt itself connects in ways I didn’t even realize at first.) I wrote:
Through one of the online homeschooling groups I belong to, I recently learned about the concept of having a conversation with books: in a couple of different ways. One is the Great Conversation, which, according to Wikipedia is “…a characterization of references and allusions made by authors in the Western canon to the works of their predecessors. As such it is a name used in the promotion of the Great Books of the Western World published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. in 1952.” The other is the notion of a conversation taking place among a reader and the books he or she is currently reading. A member of the group passed along the advice to “read voraciously, many books at a time” in order to “hear the conversation taking place among them.”
I think of having a conversation with books a little differently (and I know I’m not alone in this). I think of it in terms of the information exchanged between a reader and a book. Obviously, a book has a lot (or maybe not) to offer the reader: the ideas conveyed by an author’s words. A reader, though, also brings something to the conversation: his or her own experiences. Authors, like painters, are sometimes asked, “What is _____________ supposed to mean?” When the author or painter replies to the question with their own question, “What does it mean to you?” it may seem smarmy or like a cop-out, but it’s actually a good question. Two people can read the same book (or look at the same painting) and come away with completely different views, because each has contributed something different to the conversation between himself and the work.
When you add other readers who are being positively influenced by the same books, the connections get that much deeper and that much better.