In a recent email to another novelist, I found myself writing these words: Reading is an act of submission.
Then I began teasing that out, describing eyeballs monotonously moving left and right for hours, scanning symbols on pages. It’s an absurd thing to do, if you really think about it. It’s even more absurd to expect someone to do this for you.
Consider the below conversation:
“Kind stranger, will you use your eyeballs to scan all of these symbols I’ve carefully arranged into three-hundred-and-fifty pages of lines and stacks?” novelist says.
“Yes, novelist I do not know, I will give up ten or more hours of my valuable time to scan all of your symbols with my eyes, looking left and right over and over again, while I attempt to make a movie in my mind to go along with all of your many carefully arranged symbols,” kind stranger sometimes says.
“Even though it is you doing so much of the work with your eyes and mind, will you give me some money for this?” novelist sometimes asks.
And it’s truly amazing that the kind stranger sometimes does.
Why exactly is a reader willing to look left and right over and over again while turning pages for many hours? What are they hoping to get from that experience? Why are they sometimes willing to pay money for lines and stacks of symbols ready for eye scanning? Why would they ever submit to such an arrangement?
The conversation I was having with my novelist friend was about whether or not a writer should include a foreword at the beginning of a novel. A foreword is often the story of how a novel came to be. Some people think a novel should be able to stand on its own without an introduction or explanation. To be honest, I can see the merit in that argument. Especially when I am imagining the novel as art. Full disclosure, I tend not to read forewords before diving into a novel that has one.
But when I am thinking about the novel as soul medicine, or something that will transform someone in a way that could be healing, then the goal morphs to getting the medicine into the right mouths by any means necessary.
To get a stranger to make their eyes go right and left for hours while turning pages, there has to be a sense of trust. No one likes submitting to someone they doubt. But submitting to someone who puts you at ease can be divine.
All avid readers yearn to submit to their favorite authors, but sometimes letting potential consumers in on the game plan before the game actually begins can relax them enough to submit more willingly to authors whom they do not already trust. Which was my argument for the foreword.
There are many different types of novels.
Some are like ice cream, making us salivate and want to devour them as quickly as possible, perhaps in a vacation-like setting. And, then upon finishing, we immediately want to eat another and another and another.
Other novels might be like kale. When properly massaged and dressed with dried apricots and almonds and balsamic vinegar—or added to a fruit smoothie, or baked into butternut squash lasagna—kale can be quite delicious. And it is always packed full of nutrients. A super food. But you probably aren’t going to sell any kale on the beach. And you won’t see too many people forming long lines to buy kale in waffle cones. Most people will gladly eat the lowest grade ice creams without too much arm twisting. But even the freshest and best kale prepared by a world-class chef greatly benefits from good presentation.
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