Fact-checking Is So Boring Compared To Writing

With So Much Reading Ahead Of You, The Temptation Might Be To Speed Up. But In Fact It’s Essential To Slow Down And Read Every Word. Because One Important Thing That Can Be Learned By Reading Slowly Is The Seemingly Obvious But Oddly Underappreciated Fact That Language Is The Medium We Use In Much The Same Way A Composer Uses Notes, The Way A Painter Uses Paint. I Realize It May Seem Obvious, But It’s Surprising How Easily We Lose Sight Of The Fact That Words Are The Raw Material Out Of Which Literature Is Crafted.

Too Often Students Are Being Taught To Read As If Literature Were Some Kind Of Ethics Class Or Civics Class—or Worse, Some Kind Of Self-help Manual. In Fact, The Important Thing Is The Way The Writer Uses The Language.

Traditionally, The Love Of Reading Has Been Born And Nurtured In High School English Class

If We Want To Write, It Makes Sense To Read—and To Read Like A Writer. If We Wanted To Grow Roses, We Would Want To Visit Rose Gardens And Try To See Them The Way That A Rose Gardener Would.

But If I Were Asked To Pick One Constant, One Quality That Seems Dependable, Immutable, Endlessly Available, I'd Say That It Was Intensity. For Nothing In Sicily Seems Withheld, Done Half Way, Restrained Or Suppressed. There's Nothing To Correspond To Say, The Ironic, The Cerebral Remove At Which A Frenchman Might Consider An Idea Or A Question, Or The Scandinavian Distrust Of The Sloppy, Emotive Response.