No matter what the distance between the real and the fictional worlds, reading intelligently requires a humble acceptance of the world of the novel. It is a poor reader, and a proud one, who throws aside ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ with the sneering complaint that “It’s unrealistic. SIdney Carton never went to the guillotine.” A ‘suspension of disbelief’ is elementary to reading fiction, but it is rarely recognised as an act of humility. In part, that is due to the dour connotations that ‘humility’ has in contemporary usage, but here those connotations are completely out of place. As G. K. Chesterton said, humility makes us small, and that means that everything around us becomes large and astounding and magnificent. Humility before the world that the author presents means that we allow him to set the rules, but it also gives reading an element of play. Across the centuries, Dickens says to us, “I’ll pretend Jerry Cruncher was real is you will.” By opening the book and beginning to read, we are saying, “Let me play too.” To read well, we must become as little children.
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| — | Peter J. Leithart, ‘Authors, Authority and the Humble Reader.’ (via thecolourofmagic) |
