|
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/7/2009 Posts: 33,290 Neurons: 99,048 Location: Inside Farlex computers
|
 To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions—there we have none. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
|
|
 Rank: Newbie
Joined: 12/13/2019 Posts: 21 Neurons: 344,772 Location: Camarma de Esteruelas, Madrid, Spain
|
Even in supposedly free nations this is a huge issue. Be the state or the media, everyone has an agenda and they will try to make you swallow their bs (aka their ideology, their truth)
|
|
 Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 2/4/2014 Posts: 8,611 Neurons: 7,255,443 Location: Bogotá, Bogota D.C., Colombia
|
Context from : The Common Reader, Second Series, by Virginia Woolf
How Should One Read a Book?
In the first place, I want to emphasise the note of interrogation at the end of my title. Even if I could answer the question for myself, the answer would apply only to me and not to you. The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess. After all, what laws can be laid down about books? The battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day; but is Hamlet a better play than Lear? Nobody can say. Each must decide that question for himself. To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions — there we have none.
But to enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose-bush; we must train them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot. This, it may be, is one of the first difficulties that faces us in a library. What is “the very spot”? There may well seem to be nothing but a conglomeration and huddle of confusion. Poems and novels, histories and memoirs, dictionaries and blue-books; books written in all languages by men and women of all tempers, races, and ages jostle each other on the shelf. And outside the donkey brays, the women gossip at the pump, the colts gallop across the fields. Where are we to begin? How are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos and so get the deepest and widest pleasure from what we read?
Read more:https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c2/chapter22.html
|
|
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/26/2013 Posts: 3,475 Neurons: 352,724 Location: Minsk, Minskaya Voblasts', Belarus
|
Daemon wrote:To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions—there we have none. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Yeah. But even if you strip them to buck naked state, they will remain the same, Virginia. Right?
|
|
 Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 12/24/2017 Posts: 179 Neurons: 410,135 Location: Salvador, Tocantins, Brazil
|
Jane, a character in my latest novel does not recognize any authority to rule her life and sex choices!
|
|
 Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 5/1/2017 Posts: 6,063 Neurons: 1,417,580 Location: Casablanca, Grand Casablanca, Morocco
|
I think that to be conscious that we are guided and we are not free to choose what to read can help us to be free to read what you really want to read.
|
|
 Rank: Newbie
Joined: 2/23/2021 Posts: 2 Neurons: 4,267
|
No one ever told me what to read while in a library. On the other hand, CFR mass media, Hollywood, et. al. indeed does exactly that, both in presentation and in disappearing information and in misrepresentation. Orwell was quite aware of our reality during his period.
|
|
Guest |