How to Read More by Reading Less: Artful Reading of Fiction and Plays

How do we read?
I don’t mean do we listen to audio, speed read, sub-vocalize, or run our fingers across lines of text…
Inspired by “The Art of Reading” lectures from The Teaching Company, I am writing about how do we engage with our reading material. Prof. Timothy Spurgin plays games like “Rewrite this text in the style of [insert author]” We can play this game after asking simple questions about the text:
How does this author write?
Is it first or third person narration?
What’s the sentence length, style, and word choice?
What does descriptive language reveal about biases of the characters, especially how they perceive other characters, the setting, or themselves?
How is dialogue used in scenes?
These questions are just a glimpse into the world of artful reading.
As inspired as I am to pick up texts and consume them like a fine dinner (artfully), when I went to the library to check out the classics, I found myself walking out with books on something a little different: plays.
The book I chose to open and read on my walk home was The Theatre of the Mind by George Soule. I am already enraptured after reading the Preface and Introduction — so much so it is a challenge to write about it instead of indulge in play after play, all night long, and keep it all to myself.
It is fortuitous to find Soule’s book after listening to the lectures on “The Art of Reading.” The Theatre of the Mind describes the beauty, wonder, and challenge of reading a play.
A play is written to be performed and witnessed, for the most part, on a stage. A play is written for sets and costumes. It’s written to be memorized and delivered by voices with a musical rhythm by actors adept with vocal variety and gifted with dramatic pauses.
I am left aghast at the idea that I could have gone through life reading a play like a novel — skimming it to “get to the point” and “finish it already”, so I have another checked mental checkbox. No, no, no.
What I love about Soule’s book (so far) is, like Spurgin’s lectures, the reader is invited to question the familiar practice of reading, focusing on plays. Soule offers the readers facts about the staging of the play (be it a Greek skene or an Elizabethan stage) and also the positioning of the audience.
Beyond the set design, consider, who and what is on stage during a scene? In the theater, our eyes can linger on props and costumes while lines are delivered, but when we read a play, we are deprived of these visual and auditory experiences. We are left with lines like a skeleton without flesh.
When we read a play, we read: [Aside], [sings], [Enter Gloucester.], [Exit.] These are stage directions taken from Shakespeare’s King Lear. Let’s revel in the “theatre of the mind” to imagine these stage directions. Take an aside. The actors are on stage, but none of the actors (other than the speaker) hears what the “aside” entails. We get the feeling it’s happening right under their noses, and yet they do not even sense it. Next, there’s a speech that is sung. What if we tried to sing those lines — what would it sound like? Why is it sung? What value does it add to the vocal dynamism of the scene? Lastly, consider Enters and Exits. We get a different sensation when an actor is entering/leaving the stage with a purpose versus when the actor is entering by chance and leaving by happenstance.
If we give our imagination a brush, single words can paint pictures.
As guidance, Soule offers descriptions of how the characters are dressed, moving, and delivering the lines but only after warning us, “I offer my own opinions, but they are not to be regarded as sacred.” (Preface)
I see artful reading as reading more with less. We can go deeper with phrases and fragments. We can read every text as sacred. Just listen to the podcast “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text” to apply the methods and explore some of your favorite texts.
Whether you are savoring a sacred novel or perusing a play, I have a feeling there are hidden gems to be discovered through artful reading.
