[kgroll]

One thing I really appreciate about good authors is their ability to clearly articulate ideas or impressions that I share, but am unable to express on my own. Or in other words, I love seeing these semi-conscious ideas floating through my mind assembled eloquently in language. I think this takes an enormous amount of skill.

I agree with French author Marcel Proust, who claimed "there is no better way of coming to be aware of what one sees oneself than by trying to recreate in oneself what a master has felt." We can learn what we feel by reading material written by others. We can develop our thoughts through the thoughts of others.

Of course, one shortcoming with this idea, and in my opinion, of literature in general, is that ultimately the author is not ourselves. Despite an authors ability to help us understand our feelings and enhance our sense of perception, there inevitably is a divergence in the particulars of our personal situations and those found in writing. Trying to mold our experiences into those of a book, in hopes of finding answers or guidance, is misguided.

Proust explains better than I can myself:

'It is one of the great and wonderful characteristics of good books (which allows us to see the role, at once essential yet limited, that reading may play in our spiritual lives) that for the author they may be called 'Conclusions' but for the reader 'Incitements'. We feel very strongly that our wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off, and we would like him to provide us with answers when all he is able to provide us with is desires... That is the value of reading, and also its inadequacy. To make into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.'