Chapter Fifteen

The Other half

  In this chapter，the writer thinks most of the reader's life will not spend in reading the great books but newspapers and magazines.

    And the author had give our some rules in preceding chapters and in chapter seven，he explained that we would have to limit ourselves to the business of reading serious nonfiction books.

    To explain the rules for reading imaginative and expository literature at the same time would be confusing，and inadequate treatment of the reading of fiction or poetry could not be managed in less space than it took to discuss the nonfiction rules.

Knowing how two read imaginative literature is inherently much more difficult.However more people seem to know how to read fiction and get something out of it than nonfiction.

lacking both space and competence to do that，there are two short cuts.

  It is first of all necessary to grasp the basic differences between expository and imaginative literature.These differences will explain why we cannot read a novel as if it were a philosophical arguement，or a lyric as if it were a mathematical demonstration.

Expository books aim primarily to instruc，imaginative ones to delight.

The basic difference between expository and imaginative literature－that one instructs by commuciating，whereas the other delights by recreating what cannot be communicated－leads to another difference.

The logical of expository writing aims at an ideal of umambiguous explicit-ness.                                    Imaginative writing relies upon what is implied rather than upon what is said.

We learn from experience－the experience that we have in the course of our daily lives.

The author emphasized various differences in order to state a few negative rules.

“don't read fiction as it were fact；don't read a novel as if it were a scientific work，not even as if it were social science or psychology”

Don't try to find a “message”in a novel，play，or poem.

Don't look for terms，propositions and arguments in imaginative literature.

Don't criticize fiction by the standards of truth and consistency which properly apply to communications of knowledge.

Don't read all imaginative books eis if they were the same.

Three groups of rules for reading expository books.

We have called these three groups of rules structural，interpretive and critical.

What are the structural rules for reading fiction?

1.You must classify a piece of imagininative literature according to its kind.

2.You must grasp the unity of whole work.

3.You must not only reduce the whole to its simplest unity，you must also discover how that whole is constructed out of all its parts.

Second，what are the interpretive rules for reading fiction?

1.The elements of fiction are its episodes and incidents，its characters，and their thoughts，speeches，feelings，and actions

2.Terms are connected in propositions.

3.If there is any motion in an expository book，it is the movement of the argument，a logical transition from evidences and reasons to the conclusions they support.

Third