the White Flag of Words

  Some people are attached to their favorite authors like Twain, Dickens, or you name him. And their readers have a sense that the worlds that they have written up are familiar to them. They feel comfortable not just because they are familiar with their diction, but rather they are comfortable with the literary world(s) that they have made. So if you think about their different books that have been written by one of these authors, you might find a place where you feel welcome. And this is a 'home' for you that is different than where you pay your bills, for example.

  This 'home' is inhabited by many different characters, who live in the world of the author's making. And I don't believe that they are just marks on a page, but rather they live and move and have their being because an author has chosen to give them motivations and intentions. And if we find the author to be moral in the sense that he has lived a good life, then we tend to read what they have written. So if like how an author writes, then we tend to think that their life was not so bad. We might then ask ourselves: how did he live, so that I could be like him?

  Now this question is usually answered by looking at his biographers, who recorded what they liked about him. (The author could be female, but I will bet that my audience will look this over with a passing glance.) So if we like a certain author, we would want to find out more about him. That is to say, what the author has written has more weight than the marks that he left on paper.

  So I would suggest that these authors have their place because their audience thought that they deserved it. Furthermore, who we read will influence what else we read, since these authors have influenced our reading habits. And these habits have been shaped by the authors, whom we read because they have given us so much life out of mere words.