Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented ...” [page 89 of C.S. Lewis' "An Experiment in Criticism "]
C.S. Lewis may be most famous for his beloved children's fantasy series, "The Chronicles of Narnia", especially "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", but they all passed me by as I spent my childhood in bombed-out Germany. I discovered him rather late in adult life through his non-fiction works, one of which is "An Experiment in Criticism", in which he proposes that the quality of books should be measured not by how they are written, but by how often they are re-read.
"If on the other hand we found even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were changed, then, however little we could see in it ourselves and however it was despised by our friends and colleagues, we should not dare to put it beyond the pale." [page 69]
I couldn't agree more and have re-read this essay at least twice!
