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Garrett Bagwell Mrs. Lawrie Period 3 August 13, 2012 The Nature of Good Readers of Ella Minnow Pea Commelon serait savant si lon connaissant bien seulement cinq a six livres, well said, Mr. Flaubert, took the words right out of my mouth. Translated, this says, What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books. Vladimir Nabokov referenced this quote in his lecture from 1948 about Good Readers and Good Writers. I really agreed with this quote and it stuck out to me, and what better of an opening statement could there be for an essay written solely about analytical and critical reading? When reading Ella Minnow Pea, I must confess, I did not always read quite as critically as Mr. Nabokov may have liked, I may have enjoyed and taken notice of the details, but I didnt quite fondle them (Nabokov 1). Or like on page three of his paper, he says that every last, seemingly insignificant detail is vastly important. He stresses how a reader should study the book like a work of art, discerning its deepest meanings and nuances. Whenever I read a book, I tend to automatically focus on details, that is why it sometimes can take a long time for me to read a book because I find myself caught up in rereading a paragraph I just read to make sure I have all the details straight in my head. So a superficial knowledge of the many details in Ella

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Minnow Pea is most definitely in my head, but I will not go so far as to say that I sifted through the novel with a fine- toothed comb. On the other side of a good reader, there is the opinion of one Laurence Perrine whom I tend to disagree with. Perrine suggests that a good reader of a book, or in his case poetry, should analyze details, symbols, and metaphors of a piece and come to a specific conclusion on their true meaning. He says, *The idea+ that all interoperations are equally valid is a critical heresy (Perrine 1). Thats interesting, Mr. Perrine, because in my AP English 11 class we all read the same exact book for our summer homework and came to many different conclusions on the meanings of the literary devices and plot elements used in the book. So I suppose that all 30 of us were wrong and you were right. Okay, that makes sense. Reading the words of this man seemed to accomplish nothing aside from angering me, but he did make one interesting connection at the end of his essay, comparing the meanings of symbols in literature to a beam of light. Saying that everything within the beam of light made by the symbol is a possible conclusion, some conclusions drawn are more right than others; those at the center of the light beam, but all that fall within the cone of light are possible. I liked that much more than his idea of the interpretation of an entire piece, which had to be one specific idea. When reading Ella Minnow Pea, I dont think I came to a specific conclusion as Perrine might prefer me to do, but I did analyze the writing, per the assignments instruction, and I think I came to grasp a pretty firm concept of what Mark Dunn tried to say through his book. Of course, Perrine Im sure would come to a different conclusion and render mine invalid, but thats why Im not asking him.

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Taking all these things into account, the way Nabokov speaks of investigating a book like a work of art and the way Perrine speaks of interoperating symbols and devices, I would have to honestly say that I may not be up to par with a good reader. Sure, I read the text and I thought about it, I drew some conclusions and wrote them down in responses to the conclusion questions of the assignment, but I failed to look at Ella Minnow Pea as a work of art, I failed to investigate and discover the inner workings of the novel, I failed to uncover the true meanings of the symbols with respect to every possible detail of the story. Maybe I wasnt a good reader by these mens definitions, but after reading their thoughts and comparing them with my own experience, I will certainly know what to do in the future. Nabokov said that there are four things that make a good reader in his opinion, apart from the surgical deconstruction of the book itself, he said, the good reader is someone who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense (Nabokov 2). In that respect, I feel that I am close to reaching a point in my reading that would please this man; I pride myself in having an artistic sense, I feel that I certainly have an imagination and a nearly eidetic memory, and I do tend to use my Dictionary.com app on my phone quite often when reading a new book. I have all the technical pieces in place, now I just need to bring them all to fruition and reap the benefits of having the true nature of a good reader of books like Ella Minnow Pea.