=Edwin Balmer=: I certainly follow with senses acute the sensations in
any story I read where I can feel that the author himself felt his
story. The mental type of story makes no such impression on me, nor does
the machine-made rot which is altogether too common. I believe that a
writer can not make others really feel unless he himself actually feels
when writing.
I can see colors as well as black and white, and details when I am
thinking about them.
I studied solid geometry and liked it and therefore had no trouble at
all with it.
I have no stock pictures. I like to have a writer suggest graphically as
Kipling always did, but God spare me from the tiresome minutiæ of the
ultra realists.
Yes.
Yes.
=Ralph Henry Barbour=: Whether I visualize a story while reading it
depends entirely on the skill of the author. Generally, I do. If I
don't, I am likely not to like the story, and to stop reading it.
Probably there are exceptions to this. I am trying to say that whether I
react to a writer's description of scenes, sounds, flavors, odors and so
on depends on how skilfully the writer presents them to me. Perhaps that
is begging the question, but what else can I say? Certainly I have read
stories in which I have been constantly at the elbow of the character,
have heard what he heard, saw what he saw, smelled what he smelled, felt
joy or pain with him. Equally certainly I have utterly missed doing any
of these things in reading other stories. I can not make any distinction
between the effect on my imagination of action, scene, sound, flavor,
odor, touch. There may exist a distinction, but if so I am not aware of
it.
I am very susceptible to color, yet I think that the pictures I get from
reading are black and white; certainly in very low tones. I would say I
see details distinctly.
I can not recall having more trouble with solid geometry than with other
mathematics. I believe I found more appeal there.
My response is limited to the degree in which an author describes, yes;
or, rather, to the degree to which he succeeds in describing. A mere
concept will, of course, set me to reproducing, but I won't get as far.
If the author tells me it's a rainy day, I can picture a rainy day. But
I'm not going to bother to see the reflected light in the pools or the
glints on varnished surfaces or the gray mists in the woods. If he's
satisfied, I am, and I go ahead. I had rather, though, have him make it
a rainy day to remember instead of just one of a thousand. Of course a
writer can overdo description, but just as certainly he can underdo it.
Something should be left to the reader's imagination, but not
everything. One writer tells us "It was raining." Another tells us "It
was raining softly, insistently. In the Park the naked trees were
clothed in a pearl-gray mist. A hurrying cab gave back the white light
from its dripping varnished roof as from burnished silver." And so on.
From the first description I get the picture of a rainy day; from the
last, a description of _that particular_ rainy day. The first makes no
appeal to my powers of imagination. The second does. From the second I
can go ahead and see a hundred other details that the author doesn't
mention. Not only can, but do. He's given me the stimulus. This seems to
contradict my opening statement in this paragraph, and I'll change it.
Thus: My response is limited to the degree to which an author provides
stimuli.
As a reader I do not use stock pictures.
I do not resent having many images formed for me. I can not possibly
know so well as the author what he wishes me to see.
Yes, there is a difference in the behavior of my imagination when
writing and when reading. In reading my imagination sort of loafs on the
job. It sits back and says, "Let the other fellow do it. I'll help, of
course, but this isn't my job." In writing it gets infernally busy and
digs into details in a way that's positively annoying and wearying.
I don't think I have ever "considered these matters as 'tools of my
trade.'" Of course they must be. I mean by that that no writer can write
fiction without making an appeal to one or more of the five senses.
Being conscious of it is different. I am not. (The query presents an
idea. Why not go in for "olfactory fiction"? Specialize on stories
concerned almost entirely with smells? I have made a note of that.)
=Frederick Orin Bartlett=: When I read a good story by some one else, I
do not read it--I live it. When I see things with my eyes shut I see
them as distinctly as when my eyes are open. In both cases they are
sometimes distinct and sometimes blurred, depending a good deal upon my
interest. A feature of my own particular way of thinking which has
always interested me is my ability in a story to recall vividly a great
many details of scenes I thought I had forgotten. In other words my
subjective memory is more reliable and of better capacity than my
objective memory.
I don't remember anything at all about my troubles with solid geometry.
I have a notion they were just average.