<
https://theconversation.com/to-read-or-not-to-read-is-that-the-question-185393>
"In June this year, a six-month-old interview went viral.
Sarah Underwood is a 23-year-old British author whose debut YA novel,
Lies We
Sing to the Sea, has been described as a “sapphic reimagining of the
Odyssey”. In an interview with a student magazine at Imperial College London,
Underwood said that she had never read the
Odyssey. No, not even in
translation.
Mockery ensued. Underwood was declared “Twitter’s main character” for the day.
In a tweet liked by 11,290 people, the literary writer Brandon Taylor shared
screenshots of the interview, commenting: “Some people should not be allowed to
write books.”
Taylor’s acerbic takes are always a delight, and to any lover of reading the
response to Underwood’s statement is understandable.
But there is another way to look at it. Declarations of not-reading are not
just complacent admissions of ignorance. Not-reading is not a simple absence of
reading, a blank space where a text should be. It can be a mode of engaging
with a text.
After all, the decision not to read a text is based on a belief that we already
know what it contains. We know (or think we know) what we are choosing to read
or not read.
In the case of the
Odyssey, there is a lot of material to base that decision
on. The orally-composed ancient Greek epic poem, first fixed in written form
around the late 8th century BCE, is referenced in thousands of poems, stories,
songs, films, video games, and other art forms. These works have been created
over millennia, across hundreds of countries, languages and cultures.
The
Odyssey has been translated, rewritten, reimagined and riffed on in a
myriad ways; it has meant many different things to many different people."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
