No, it seems to me the only books worth while (that is, in the sense of
popular fiction, etc.,) are the books that stimulate fresh imaginings of
one's own.
I hate to read a book that does _not_ produce an individual vision and
so add to one's stock, as it were. The chief delight of reading seems to
me exploratory.
On the contrary, a writer who can form images is a great writer. But
having images distorted or ill-formed is merely tiresome, and annoys one
with a sense of wasting time.
Yes, all the difference between eating a meal and cooking it.
(Incidentally I would always prefer the cooking.)
My brother-in-law, Frank Norris, once said that when he really wished
carefully to depict a scene, he appealed to each of the five senses in
turn; and to a greater or lesser degree I don't think any picture can be
painted without one or more of these "tools."
=Anne O'Hagan=: It seems to me that the only possible answer to this
question is: "It depends upon the genius of the author." There are
villages in England I could find my way about in, there are
drawing-rooms in which I perfectly see the furnishings, because of Jane
Austen and Thackeray. I have grown hungry reading Dickens' meals. I
suffered utter fatigue, misery and coldness crawling back to the farm
with "Hetty" in _Adam Bede_; and I think I had something the same actual
feeling of physical exhaustion in reading the Italian home scenes in
_The Lost Girl_. But for the most part the impressions are impressions
only, not experiences.
Pictures are colored when I actually have them, and details distinct.
All mathematics gave me trouble, but I think that the climax of despair
was reached in calculus instead of solid geometry.
Response follows vivid suggestion as well as detailed description--when
there is response.
I suppose that if the author of the village church or the cowboy did not
cause me to see a definite creation, I have a property-room church or
cowboy which my imagination would fit into the story. But I think with a
little help I am able to construct a new one for the story in question.
Probably yes. That is, I should be bored by not being allowed to use my
own imagination a little.
Yes. Only the masters of literature can absorb my mind with their
characters, create a world which takes the place of the actual one for
the time being; but when I am writing (with most pleasure and most of
the feeling of creation, I mean--most successfully) I can be absorbed in
my characters and can live in their world without for a moment believing
that I am a master of literature. I mean by this that I know from my own
experience how much _real_ creation is involved in the production of
that which is not great or fiction.
No.
=Grant Overton=: I often see the people, the action and above all the
setting. I do not know that I hear the sounds or taste the flavors or
smell the smells or feel any impacts. I do feel what the people of the
story feel, at least in the more emotional moments. I have suffered
exquisite pangs along with my characters, have been thrilled with them,
have despaired with them. To me fiction is merely a form of
communicating feeling.
I do not see things with my eyes shut but with them open. I seldom
notice details. What I see I can not describe, except as an effect. That
is why I can not write descriptions full of physical detail.
Plane geometry is the only mathematical subject that gave me trouble. I
don't think I ever studied solid geometry, but I undoubtedly passed an
examination in it.
My response is wholly determined by the emotional content of the
narrative and the emotional activity of the characters though
conditioned by the skill of the author in verbal presentation.
I should probably image the village church from one I had seen. I should
have no picture of the cowboy unless emotionally I found myself akin to
him.
I do not mind how many images are formed for me but I resent nothing but
images. I want, above all, to feel something.
Yes, my imagination when writing and when reading is totally different,
but I do not know whether I can say how. In writing my imagination
labors often painfully. In reading--but I suppose it is the difference
between listening to music and playing some instrument yourself.
I can not answer as to tools. The five senses mean little to me when it
comes to writing or reading. I should say that the appeal was to my
intellectual senses if there is such a thing.
=Sir Gilbert Parker=: Everything is seen clearly. Better at geometry
than anything else. Each case has its own vision. Do not resent
multiplicity of images. It is the duty of the author to command my
vision.
=Hugh Pendexter=: I get all the drama very clearly or else I quit. I
must have the geography of the story in mind and often post myself on
the locale with use of a map. I respond thoroughly to the comedy or
tragedy of a story and read myself into it. I react more quickly to
pathos than to the infliction of physical pain. Torture of a victim does
not torture me. A child saving pennies to buy a garish, impossible tie
for his old grandfather probably would bring tears. If a road or river
is pictured, I must see it as though walking over or along it. I do not
believe my imagination goes much beyond what the writer supplies, as
then it becomes my story and not his and I can finish it without
bothering to finish the book.
I really see things with my eyes _open_. The details are as distinct as
any my physical vision can reveal. They are not outlines, nor black and
white studies, but as they actually would exist as to form and color. I
see most clearly those scenes I write about.
Mathematics never intrigued me. My recollection of solid geometry is
that it was to me the delirium tremens of plane geometry. My two sons
find mathematics absorbing. I abhor mathematics.
As to degree of my response, that is explained above.
Much difference. When writing a story my imagination supplies a wealth
of detail that does not appear in the yarn. If I have to supply overmuch
for the other fellow's yarn, I quit, as noted above.
The next query is rather blind to me. My best "tool of trade" is my
immediate vision of what I wish to put into type.
=Clay Perry=: I visualize very much; in reading a story as well as in
writing it. A story in which I am unable to visualize clearly annoys me.
I want to go around the corners and see what the author sees. I suspect
that an author who does not furnish the locale, color and plan which
will enable me to see his story is careless. This goes for the
characters, double. They should be seen clearly, I believe.
Sounds, I "hear," also, in the inner ear and taste the flavors with the
tongue of imagination and sometimes my mouth waters to a pleasant flavor
well pictured. To smells, being supersensitive anyway, the reaction is
strong. To touch the reaction is not so strong, except in rare
instances, mostly unpleasant suggestions, pain. I feel the pain if in
sympathy with the character who suffers it, more than otherwise.
"Seeing things with my eyes shut" amounts to re-creation, through the
stimuli of description, of a more or less familiar scene; or at least
with a familiar scene the nucleus of the image built upon the stimuli.
Details are distinct if description is vivid and, again, if the stimuli
call up something which I have actually seen or experienced in the past
that is akin to the scene or incident described.
Solid geometry gave me less trouble than any other mathematics and Lord
knows the others gave me trouble!
I believe the concept stimulates me to imaging "what lies over the hill"
in many cases, the "behind the scenes," perhaps because of a habit in my
own writing of trying to set a stage "solid," not with mere "drops."
Stock pictures for stock "sets"? For a village church--a composite
picture of the several dozen I had to attend when a boy, none of them
the same exactly. For a cowboy, different stock pictures in different
context. I think this depends largely on the manner and setting in which
the object of character is _first_ introduced.
Yes, there is a difference in the behavior of my imagination when I am
reading stories and when writing them. In reading, one has only to
accept the author's concept; in writing, one has to consider and reject
several and decide upon one. (There is, however, in reading, the
tendency to look behind the scenes, which is perhaps a fainter
manifestation of the selective impulse or artistic judgment habitual in
the creation of a picture myself.)
I have thought of my reading constantly in connection with my writing.
If a book or story is good, I get a stimulation from it, perhaps an
inspiration, which, mingled with the profusion of other impulses and
ideas, emerges, some time, as a part, or a tendency, in my own work.
More often, however, I am astonished, when well started on a story of my
own or when completing it, to run across another with a curious
similarity of thought or philosophy--or perhaps, a contradictory
philosophy in similar setting.
=Michael J. Phillips=: I try hard to visualize in important scenes. If I
get stuck in a description I stop and visualize--hard. I don't see all
the characters, but only the principal ones. I don't imagine the sounds
unless I want to conjure up the effect of a sudden, alarming sound, like
a shot, on the man or woman who hears it.
I do not taste the flavor of a story. I do not get rough or smooth
contact nor physical pain. Rarely a story moves me to laughing aloud,
and equally rarely, say twice a year in each case, does a story bring
tears. My response to a good story--and it must be good--is the prickle
down your back when he really puts it over. This may be at the finish or
when one of the characters does an admirable or a clever thing in a way
wholly admirable and noteworthy, and what is done is described by a
master. Too much sophistication to get the kick that once I did, I
suppose. A duel of words between two men in a love story over the girl,
a battle of wits in which breeding and good sportsmanship are displayed,
will produce the prickle down my spinal column quicker than exciting
physical action.
I can not see the scenes with my eyes shut readily. It is only by
effort, and they are in black and white. I can not visualize the faces
of all my friends and relatives. The degree of nearness and dearness
does not enter into visualization at all. Some strangers impress
themselves on my mental retina, and I can not recall by shutting my eyes
how some relative, perhaps in the next room, looks. I have a lot of fun
visualizing a horse race with the jockeys wearing different colored
jackets. This I use in the rare attempts I make to get to sleep when I
do not fall instantly asleep on going to bed. I can't make it stick
much. The colors get all mixed up. I have to keep telling myself which
color my favorite wears.
I went to high school only a month or two in the second year, then quit
to paint little white coffins in a casket factory, so you see solid
geometry is a sealed book to me. Algebra was bone labor to me, but I was
quite proud of myself when I solved a problem, and in some degree it was
an attraction on that account.
I think I prefer the author not to clutter the picture with too many
words. I don't want too much detail painted in, but I do want him to
make his primary and essential characters and objects plain and clear.
If it's a man and a horse, I don't want any impressionistic or cubist
daubs that leave me in doubt whether it's a monkey and a rhinoceros. If
he'll just show me plainly it's a man and a horse, I'll dress them up to
suit myself. He makes me tired when he goes meticulously into detail,
unless he's an artist--and they are damn few.
Each case produces its individual vision, I think.
To me, the reading of stories and the writing of them are not related at
all. In reading, the imagination wanders where it wills; in writing, it
is an imagination harnessed and doing its work.
They are tools of the trade and I use them steadily, though perhaps not
so much as I should.
=Walter B. Pitkin=: I see colors and details pretty well with my eyes
shut. Since I turned forty this function has noticeably weakened. When
in my twenties and early thirties I could look at a piece of white paper
and see, in faint, swimmy colors projected on it, the things I was
imagining. My capacity to visualize has been unusually intense, as
psychological tests have repeatedly shown. At the end of a day's work I
can see the minutest details of the objects I have dealt with; the grain
in the wood of my desk, the shadows on my office floor, the colors and
forms in the street. I can see these at night just before going to
sleep; and I used to get myself to sleep by watching the parade of
visions!
All mathematics was extremely difficult for me in school, but chiefly
because I had poor teachers. Geometry still is almost a black art to me,
although higher mathematics is fairly easy.
My response to what I read is uncomfortably excessive. In handling the
manuscripts of other writers I am constantly seeing more in the scenes
than the writers themselves saw; and they have often told me this.
I have no stock visions of types. But I do tend to reproduce a series of
real persons or objects from my experience, when I read about a similar
one.