memento_mori
Active Member
I agree with Alex Solzhenitsyn when he says, "Good literature substitutes for an experience we ourselves have not lived through." Although I have not personally burned a man alive or hung a woman for witchcraft, I can enjoy these experiences by reading books such as Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
I remember one day in the middle of summer vacation I had a strange urge to rise up against censorship and find some sort of deeper meaning to life than all of society's expectations. I spoke to my psychiatrist about it and he suggested I take more medication while reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I was flabergasted by how well this good piece of literature could substitute for the actual experience. The book was morbidly interesting like watching a dog chase its tail just before being hit by a midget driving a Hummer. I simply could not put the book down until I had read the final page, almost as if the book was super glued to my hands with an adhesive that would not let go until I finished the book.
Another nostalgic experience that supports my opinion is when I studied the play The Crucible by a man named Miller. I was overwhelmed by the experience of the Salem witch trials. Instead of dreaming of voluptuous women at night I started having nightmares about Puritan women being hung for trials they did not commit. I became fascinated with hanging as a form of capital punishment. I started reading other stories like A Hanging by George Orwell. I did research on how long a drop you would need to snap a human neck depending on how much the criminal weighed; how to tie a neuse properly and old English methods of hanging. Now whenever I get the urge to see a human being drop 10 feet with a rope tied around their neck, I read a book. Obviously it is much more effecient to read the experience than it would be to go through the experience.
For a moment, imagine how life would be if we couldn't substitute experience with good literature. Horny old ladies would be forced to have sexual relationships rather than reading romance novels, scientists would not be able to trust previously written records, and homocidal maniacs like myself would be forced to murder instead of fantasizing about it in a good book. Thank goodness that we can substitute good literature for actual experiences!!
I remember one day in the middle of summer vacation I had a strange urge to rise up against censorship and find some sort of deeper meaning to life than all of society's expectations. I spoke to my psychiatrist about it and he suggested I take more medication while reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I was flabergasted by how well this good piece of literature could substitute for the actual experience. The book was morbidly interesting like watching a dog chase its tail just before being hit by a midget driving a Hummer. I simply could not put the book down until I had read the final page, almost as if the book was super glued to my hands with an adhesive that would not let go until I finished the book.
Another nostalgic experience that supports my opinion is when I studied the play The Crucible by a man named Miller. I was overwhelmed by the experience of the Salem witch trials. Instead of dreaming of voluptuous women at night I started having nightmares about Puritan women being hung for trials they did not commit. I became fascinated with hanging as a form of capital punishment. I started reading other stories like A Hanging by George Orwell. I did research on how long a drop you would need to snap a human neck depending on how much the criminal weighed; how to tie a neuse properly and old English methods of hanging. Now whenever I get the urge to see a human being drop 10 feet with a rope tied around their neck, I read a book. Obviously it is much more effecient to read the experience than it would be to go through the experience.
For a moment, imagine how life would be if we couldn't substitute experience with good literature. Horny old ladies would be forced to have sexual relationships rather than reading romance novels, scientists would not be able to trust previously written records, and homocidal maniacs like myself would be forced to murder instead of fantasizing about it in a good book. Thank goodness that we can substitute good literature for actual experiences!!
