A Report of Random Observations

Talking with a friend the other day, I stumbled into what can only be described as a bit of mental silliness. It's something that happens with semi-regularity, where I'll say something, blink, think a little, and reduce what I'd just said back to something that is barely intelligible, having no apparent similarity to its original form. The conversation in question was about the relationship between language and thought, and the thing that made me blink was something like, "Well, I've been reading Orwell..." And that's all I got out, before the aforementioned blinking and thinking.

It's a commonplace usage, really, to read an author, rather than an author's output, but what does it mean? Are all texts such an extension of their author that we can refer to them the same as if they were part of the author's body? To read is to understand. To say that one reads the weather, or the auguries, or what have you, is to say that you gain understanding of the thing read. So it follows, that to read an author is to gain insight into that author, his way of thinking, his worldview, his ethics, his hopes, dreams, etc. But, at the same time, it feels very wrong to reduce a life down like that. To say that you know someone because you have read their books is arrogant. It makes me think of Hamlet scolding Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in III.ii:


"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me."


Men are more than the sum of their parts, certainly, but does that make understanding someone through their output a useless exercise? To say this, is naïve. Were this so, Milton never would have said that "a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life"; never would have made the same connection I did, by calling the book the author's life-blood; never would have made the book a physical part of its creator.

So, how much is it proper to gain from reading an author? How much is it actually practicable? How much is a responsible amount, and at what point does it become arrogant? I'm not sure, and really don't want to hazard a guess. I just know that I like reading.