The Embodied Reader and Experiential Death: EmergingReadership for ‘Brooksian’Fiction

Abstract

Fortunately, there will always be a necessity for stories, and therefore, there will always be an audience. The act of reading is one of the most defining features of civilisation. Stories, whatever form they may adorn, have always been the guiding beacon of intellectual growth in society. It adds culture to everything that is deemed as the human condition. It is a constructive process where knowledge is gained and modified at a rapid rate. As Rosenblatt notes, reading is an opportune time where there is a transfer of both efferent or factual and aesthetic or pleasurable information from the text to the reader. Thus, reading can be collectively considered a transactional event where the reader and the text turn into an amalgamated entity. “By its very nature, engagement in the literacy act assumes an active reader whose interpretations are not stagnant but continually shaped by the influx of new information” (Almasi 315). When it comes to defining reading communities, it is more often formed by a group of people that share a selective interest in reading. It is incepted as a culture of literacy. Participating in the act of reading as a community certainly paves the way for a holistic understanding of the world and society at large. Any community or circle of readers binds themselves as a group simply due to a single aspect, and that is the text. Such a group is not forged by any formal rules. Surely it is a matter of shared preferences. The neurological engagement offered by the process of reading is quite an interesting topic to focus on. Contemporary research on reading communities embellishes the idea that reading can truly act as a tool to build empathy. “In other words, reading fiction lights up the brain in ways that mimic the neural activities of the experience you’re reading about. For example, if you read a well-written passage about a character hiking through the wilderness, your brain reacts as if you’re on that hike. If you read a passage about a character drinking lemonade, the part of your brain that activates when you taste something sour lights up. You might even start salivating” (Kidera). The simulation caused by fiction can profoundly educate the reader. If a reading community chooses to deal with fiction that exposes them to the cruelty of slavery, the members of this reading club may probably reach a point of empathising with the enslaved as they will be moved by their narrative. This will certainly sensitise them to never commit such inhumane acts in real life. They will be educated to never indulge in racism. Keeping the same in mind, can readers be educated about death? Literary fiction has long been quintessential in defining what it truly means to exist. Death has to be endowed not only as the end of life but also as a very important part of it. People do not really contemplate much about understanding death, and this begs the analysis of a book club dedicated to comprehending the stark macabre side of life. Bringing together a reading community is a tasteful way to disseminate knowledge to the masses. Given the fact that reading fiction is a pursuit of pleasure, the hypothesis that this paper will try to prove is quite simple. Will people form a community to read about death? And if so, what good can it do for the betterment of the human experience?