"One of the roots from which these chapters grew was an abandoned essay on the Waverley novels of Scott. The home i was brought up in possessed a good edition of the Waverley novels, and I had, I think, read them all in early life, with utter fascination. Some years later, at college, Guy Mannering was on a course and I reread it, but i had entered the age of intolerance by then, and Guy Mannering now seemed to me only a clumsy and faked narrative with wooden characters and an abominable style. I read Scott as little as possible though my earlier professional life..."-Frye, The Secular Scriptures, Pg. 5
An intolerance for romances (as in the stories) seems to be bread into us by our critical scopes (so wanting in our generation) which leads to an either/or argument as to whether Romance is indeed as blocky and unreal as our analysis shows or whether possibly our critical scopes are negatively reductive--but due to the popularity of its unrecognized hypocrisy, it is incapable of realizing its own ignorance which sees only errors where errors "should be". (Error being another way of saying how, when we look at a certain situation in a romance story, we correct it to how "real life is"). Holisticily this error (and reductively-these errors), our responses, actions, or devolvement of plots need not be. But, for the development of "critical skills" they must be present, and if they are not present, two options appear: the criticalist finds the error in these happy tales; or b, the story, having not even the possibility of error, is tossed aside angrily since it could not provide even an ounce of intellectual stimulation.
If either of these are the case it would seem the academic has not really learned how to read, or even how to enjoy reading. They have learned to mistake their spectacles for their eyes and to read their brain instead of the book. When a person finds they no longer take delight in romances--they have not reached some level of maturity--far from it. They have placed a veil of ignorance, a spectacle of illusions in front of their eyes, and, having willingly given up the World, they allow a self-fulfilling brain washing to overtake them in which the skewed vision of their spectacles construct another world--their world---their matrix--which they are incapable of escaping until the constructions inevitably fall from the extroverted pressure of keeping things at bay and the introverted pressure of all those things suppressed and imprisoned cause a break (which, as we have seen, sometimes comes as laughter). What is it then about these critical skills of analysis that upon our departure from the institution leave us skepticists, cynical and devoid of wisdom, incapable of intuition (which is commonly and erroneously referred to as "speculation")?
It is as simple as realizing that reading stories is, was, and never should be considered "work" or a serious "business". Stories are about delight; a letting go of intellectual contraceptives so that we may feel the words (not the cold clammy sheath of plastic protection) from something so potent and enjoyable that our lives might give birth to something. It is fear of being forever changed that clings in the shadowed peripherals of the institutions place-dependent memories. It is this fear which directs the conversations like shrubs and trees lining a well worn path. The seriousness of stories is that they provide a contradiction to work, to seriousness. They provide play. Any society that attempts to rob the artists of his playground will find the inevitability of children not wanting to play, becoming fat, stagnant. Soon their school work is effected. We look down on them. And soon enough we take recess away all together.
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