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Actual photo of PJ Reece having a mystical experience while researching this blog post.
What if we knew WHY READERS READ.
Imagine how confidently we could hammer out manuscripts. Armed with the motive for consuming fiction, we could easily make our stories come true.
Why readers read—writers would kill for the answer.
I know, they say that reading is an escape, that it’s a relief from our hum-drum lives. That’s what they say. Who the heck is they, anyway? Conventional wisdom, that’s who.
Yes, I’m pretty riled up. Any student of fiction should soon discover that stories are no mere palliative. We’re hooked on reading. We’re addicts. And yet no one—authors, critics, publishers, writing gurus—no one is digging for a deeper explanation.
And then, to my surprise, I see in the spring issue of The Kenyon Review where poet and novelist Amit Majmudar is talking about the “mystical nature of the literary experience”.
The MYSTICAL NATURE of the literary experience!
Majmudar speaks of a “mystical union” between reader and protagonist. He says that by “dwelling outside ourselves a while” the reader experiences a “dissolution of the self.”
UNSELVING he calls it.
(My wife says, “Take that word out and shoot it.” If anyone can coin a better word, please let me have it.)
What’s much more important is that Majmudar believes that this literary empathy is…are you ready for this:
“The highest expression of the novelist’s or dramatist’s art.”
Amit Majmudar is my new best friend. Here he is again:
“To forget one’s selfhood by e
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