One of my literature professors last semester often chided our class for trying to find the “point” or the “meaning” of a book. There is no single, summarizable point, he argued. There is no thesis. That’s not the purpose of literature. He often compared books to people: books, like people, take time and attention. Books are inherently process-oriented capsules of experience, idea, story, thought, and feeling.
For the last several weeks, I have been reading Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. I picked it up because I love her prose. The story itself is far more abstract and difficult: a strict series of soliloquies, no narration, only the speech-thought of six characters, outer and inner life tangled in one stream. I spent the first hundred pages suffering confusion and mild frustration. I felt a little like I was standing before a visual feast but had not the eyesight nor the glasses to understand what I was looking at. What’s the point? I asked myself. What’s she even talking about? After a hundred or so pages, tired of hitting my head against the same impervious wall, I nearly gave up.
But the next time I picked up the book, something changed. The characters started to become real, relatable. I started to recognize their thoughts as mirrors of mine. I felt understood―seen―in a way that few authors are capable of doing consistently. It is the feeling of having subconscious urges, motives, notions articulated. It is the same sort of satisfaction as finally recalling a word on the tip of your tongue. This is one of the distinct qualities of Woolf that make her worth the time and effort for me.
Am I now able to tell you the “point” of The Waves? No. I would have considerable difficulty summarizing the book in a helpful way. Can I explain what I learned from the book? I don’t know if I can. Its value lies far more in the fleeting but rewarding moments of seeing your inner life play out in remarkably vivid words. Not every book is like this one; many others are practical, perhaps with explicit argumentation, and others relish surprising plot twists and narrative more than the visceral, intangible gratification that I am speaking of. But in either case, there is no such thing as a shortcut. There are no shortcuts―synopses, summaries, run-downs, key points, theses―with books.
Could the same be true for people? Perhaps because I’m an introvert (whatever that means) I find the books-are-like-people comparison just as helpful as the opposite: people are like books.
I, too, am guilty of regarding books as wordy, unwieldy receptacles with hidden truths to be extracted, decoded, and distilled into neat points. But I also understand books on a more intuitive level: I know I must be patient, willing to sit through fifty or so pages of exposition before any real pay-off; I know I must start at the beginning if I have any hope of enjoying the rest; I know it is far more sustainable and enjoyable for me to read a chapter every day instead of trying to cram-read the whole book the night before a discussion class. I know the purpose of reading is not just so I know what happens at the conclusion of the narrative, but to experience everything leading to the end.
Perhaps, for those of us who are less awkward with books than we are with people, there is something to be said about the way we approach books―and people. As silly as it sounds, I am still taking baby steps in learning to love (and like) people genuinely. Yet over the past year, I have begun to learn the value of patient, joyful interest in others. I want to cultivate deep friendships, but I can’t do that unless I regard small talk not as a hurdle to jump as soon as possible, but a necessary foundation of self-disclosure. I want to know my friends better, but it is far better for me to plan to see them in short intervals on a consistent basis than to offer only the leftovers of my schedule. I want to know my close circles well enough to pray for their particular struggles, temptations, and triumphs, but these are not impersonal facts to glean, key points, or theses―these are pieces of people and their hearts.
I have found that the joys of reading―fascination, inspiration, surprise, understanding―though not exactly the same, are similar to the joys of forming a friendship, of knowing a person. Of course, the simile will eventually break down. People are not books. Books, for all their rich meaning and layers of analysis, are crafted neatly to end in a reasonable number of pages at a pleasurable narrative pace. People are not nearly so neat. But I am beginning to turn the joyful patience with which I come to books toward people, toward building relationships with expectant endurance, grace, interest, and care. And I am beginning to find joy in the discovery of friends that are genuinely admirable, far different from me, and startlingly, wonderfully complex.