Reading experiences

William Styron

"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end," said novelist William Styron. "You live several lives while reading."

That simple statement requires at least three comments:

1. I doubt that a book has to be great to leave the reader with a variety of experiences. Most books, being more than just a few pages long, tend to be a collection of facts and ideas in the case of nonfiction books or incidents, images and conversations in the case of fiction. Each of these, for the diligent reader, can produce a new experience, something to ponder, something to question, something to inspire. Mostly we just keep reading to find out what comes next, but the potential for new experiences is always there.

2. After a movie at a theater, I often like to sit for awhile to watch the credits. Not that I am interested in the credits, but I do like to listen to the music and think about the movie. Am I a little exhausted by the story? Perhaps. But I do like to spend a few moments thinking about what I have just watched.

In the same way, books often require a few moments for thought. Or maybe a few days. In the case of a novel, we may need to take the story apart and put it back together again. What does it mean? Do we really believe it? Has it changed us?

3. Living several lives at once may be the best reason for reading fiction. We get to be different people and enter minds very different from our own yet in so many ways just like our own. Reading The Elephant of Belfast recently I got to be a young female zookeeper trying save a young elephant's life, an older woman oppressed by sorrow, a member of the Irish Republican Army willing to do anything for his cause and several other people, as well.

All this while sitting in my easy chair just being myself.