回忆鲁迅先生的阅读
recall ralph scott whitman's reading habits
when he wrote about the art of reading, his eyes would close to watch the pages turn, their movements smooth and deliberate until they met him halfway.
one night i was sitting at a table, reading with my friend john, when he began to write, i saw something i hadn't seen since. johndidn't know what it was, but he stopped and pulled out a pen and paper.
i asked him："what's this thing?" he looked at me for a moment, then took the pen off his side of the page and began writing again. i thought thenthose lines were interesting enough to write them down when they were done.
in the years that followed, ralph scott whitman continued to think deeply about how we see and interpret what we read, but it's clear that for him, reading was not a solitary pursuit. his eyes always stayed on the page until he could't look away.
i wonder if any of you have ever wondered why so many stories seem to be written without telling us whose or what they are? ralph scott whitman probably didn't know that either.
i think most of us, like me, never learned how to see the story in a text, but sometimes we just feel it coming at us, and sometimes we don't. i've had moments where i felt like something was missing or like i couldn't make sense of what I read, and then i just kept going forward, pushing through my anxiety.
as ralph scott whitman sat in the library, he'd always be looking at the books that other people were reading. some of them were so strange or confusing, but i suppose for him it was just another way to look at life, a way to see beyond what we thought we knew.
on another note, one night ralph scott whitman went out alone, and as he stood there, thinking about everything that happened outside his house, he couldn't help but laugh. the world seemed so small, yet somehow it still felt so big.
i'll stop here for now, because i think i've spent enough time thinking about reading, and i need to get back to writing my own story.
