=Ben Ames Williams=: Reading usually awakens in me only an appreciation
of the author's ability--or a criticism of his lack of it. I get more
pleasure out of discovering how an author has done this or that than in
reading his story as a story. An example within the past fortnight, in
Tolstoi's _War and Peace_. He describes a banquet and gives a paragraph
to the state of mind of a German tutor who had not appeared previously
and does not appear thereafter. After you have read the dozen lines you
know the tutor. That passage gave me more pleasure than anything in the
book. In like fashion, the bit of paper fluttering to the floor when
they opened the long-closed bungalow in Conrad's _Victory_; the derby
hat rolling on its crown after the murder in his _Secret Agent_. These
things delight me. Rarely any emotional reaction. An exception; in
_Saint Teresa_, when the lady tried to rip off the gentleman's lip I had
a moment of actual physical nausea.
These statements apply only to my reading to myself; if I read aloud, I
laugh, cry, tremble, shudder or adore as the author intended.
=Honore Willsie=: A whole lot depends on who wrote the story. Robert
Louis Stevenson stimulates my imagination to such a degree that as
regards one of his tales I can answer yes to this group of questions.
Joseph Conrad, ditto. Lesser writers in less degree.
Yes, I see things with my eyes shut in vivid detail and in full color.
Solid geometry was my favorite form of mathematics and I did well in it.
All depends on the skill of the author in choice of words.
As a reader I have no stock pictures.
I read _Lorna Doone_ and _If Winter Comes_ with equal pleasure. One
paints, the other suggests, pictures. But both are presented by masters.
Much less concentrated effort of imagination in reading than in writing.
No.
=H. C. Witwer=: In reading a story my imagination _does_ reproduce the
story-world of the author, or else I can not finish his yarn. I see his
characters, the action and setting, as well as if I were there. Usually
when I get real interested in a story--and I generally do--I find my
mind wandering between the lines and wondering what the author is going
to do with his characters. What will his climax be? If he fools me
without stretching the long arm of Mr. Coincidence too far, or without a
grotesque improbability, I am that author's greatest fan and will read
him assiduously, thinking, "Ah, if _I_ could write like that!" Mere
trick endings or endings that I have grasped on page two of the story
arouse my honest indignation. In a well-written yarn all my senses will
react to those described. I have been drenched with spray by Conrad;
starved, fought and shed blood with Couzens, Young and, most of all the
latter, Arthur O. Friel. I would offer one of his South American jungle
tales as a typical story to which all my senses reacted. I would say the
"pictures I see with my eyes shut" are colored approximately to the
scene and rather clear-cut than blurred.
I never studied solid geometry--at the time I might or should have been,
I was studying left hooks and straight rights!
On some things my response is limited to the degree in which the author
describes them. On others the mere concept will set me to reproduce just
as vividly. In this class I would put mention of the sea, jungle, a
prize-fight, Indian warfare, gambling, Chinese settings, and other
things that have a strong appeal to my imagination. In the first class I
would put things that have no appeal to me and with which I have had no
acquaintance. I'm afraid, as a reader, I do have "stock pictures" for
village churches, cowboys and other things with which I'm not familiar.
(No reflection on the village church--or the cowboy either, for that
matter.)
As a reader I do resent too many images, too much description,
particularly the latter. A paragraph by a good author is more
stimulating to the imagination, more interesting and less of a "drag" on
the action of the story, than pages by others. I loathe this sort of
thing: "He sat down at his frugal meal of fried eggs, hash browned
potatoes, wheat bread, coffee, condensed milk, creamery butter and salt
and pepper. The potatoes were a bit crisp. The eggs, turned over once,
etc." And I don't care _who_ writes it. It has always irritated me and
always will!
There is a great deal of difference in the behavior of my imagination
when reading stories and when writing them. When reading, my imagination
is joy-riding, when writing it has entered an endurance contest.
I have never considered these matters as tools of my trade, but I do not
doubt that they are.
=William Almon Wolff=: I'm afraid I don't react that way at all--or to a
very limited extent. It seems to be my mind that's active, when I read.
I'm much more sensitive to music than to words, so poetry and such prose
as Conrad's move me. But, even so, it's what I read, rather than what
moved the writer, that engages me. In other words, I'm more interested
in the writer's emotions and reactions than in what stimulated them.
My imagination isn't a visual one. I don't see things with my eyes shut
at all, so far as I know.
No. I was a frightful dub at mathematics, but I didn't begin to take
even the foggiest interest in them until I got into trigonometry and
solid geometry.
Decidedly it's the concept that I want.
Individual visions, every time.