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Originally Posted by MarkD
What is a lazy reader? If I read a work one time and just put it away am I a lazy reader?
A lazy reader is one who jumps to conclusions.
Also one who lets others decide the value of a work for him, or determine his opinions of it in other ways, without caring to check it against any original thoughts or reasonable cautions he might himself have.
If you put a work aside and it has given you what you like, you are not a lazy reader. But if you read it and then claim much knowledge of an author's works in general from one work, you are being lazy. Or if you
claim much knowledge or understanding of an author or a work (or works) because you've read a single critic, or biographer, you are a lazy reader. There are even some people who have only cursorily read a single work, but have glanced through some criticism or biography, and then felt informed enough to hold quite strong, even inviolate opinions, on certain authors and their works. This happens a lot with authors who have been highly politicized by others. Many movies about religious ideas get the same treatment from people who haven't seen them yet are willing to protest outside theaters and tell anyone who will listen how terrible they are in every way imaginable.
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Also, I am very bad at being able to abstract meaning from a writer beyond the story he is telling. I miss symbolism, etc. Right now I am reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and I like it a lot but I don't see anything beyond the story itself and that makes me feel a little stupid. I also feel stupid because I have to have a dictionary beside me when I read him. Is that weird? I always thought I had a pretty good vocabulary until I started reading McCarthy.
Read The Hero with A Thousand Faces. It's like a skeleton key to myths and literature.