Isaac Bashevis Singer (post 2): As readers, do people with multiple personality trait go with the flow, and not complain about unclear writing?
So far, in my preliminary reading about Singer, he appears to be another writer with multiple personality trait. And I have previously thought that such a person, as a reader, might tend to go with the flow, and not make an issue of unclear writing. So I was surprised to read the following:
“I am not happy with bad writing…I still demand that a writer should write clearly, should have a story to tell, should write it well…and that the story should be more or less convincing in its own terms. In other words, I’m not fooled by all these coverups” (1, pp. 130-131).
“The modern writer is so eager to be profound, to be symbolic, to show off his greatness, that the reader cannot enjoy him anymore. Never before in the history of literature have the readers been so fooled, so hypnotized against their will, to call mediocrity greatness…The masters [e.g. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky] were all great storytellers, and they wrote in a very clear way, they tried their best to be clear. Language is made to communicate, it has to make itself understood, not become a mystery which has to be explained by other language…I don’t hide behind puzzles, riddles, symbols which mean nothing” (1, pp. 150-151).
Are there any group differences between people with and without multiple personality in how they are as readers? Or are individual differences much greater than group differences?
1. Grace Farrell (Editor). Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations. Jackson and London, University Press of Mississippi, 1992.
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