Panel: Most Important Book on my Bookshel

Pun, Lawrence K.L.

English

Iowa Research Online

University of Iowa 
International Writing Program Archive of Residents' Work 
9-14-2007 
The Writer as Reader – the Complexities of “as” 
Lawrence K.L. Pun 
Panel: Most Important Book on my Bookshelf 
Rights 
Copyright © 2007 Lawrence Pun 
Recommended Citation 
Pun, Lawrence K.L., "The Writer as Reader – the Complexities of “as”" (2007). International Writing 
Program Archive of Residents' Work. 717. 
https://ir.uiowa.edu/iwp_archive/717 
Hosted by Iowa Research Online. For more information please contact: lib-ir@uiowa.edu. 
The Writer as Reader – the Complexities of  “as” 
Lawrence K L Pun 
 
“The Writer as Reader,” at first glance, seems a tautology self-explanatory and obvious on its 
own. We all read. We all write. But if  writing is to “sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity,” 
as Susan Sontag says, this clause requires more contemplation. 
 
To begin, I’ve already used Susan Sontag’s words, a sentence I read in her 
posthumously-published book At the Same Time. I do not have to do so; I choose to. Quotation is 
a well-established convention, particularly in essays and academic writing, sometimes to support 
your argument or sometimes simply to pay homage to writers you really admire – as I admire 
Susan Sontag for her wisdom and integrity. As you may know, the word “citation” can mean 
both “quotation” and “commendation.” But reading and writing is more than the practice of  
making allusion. 
 
Reading Precedes Writing 
 
To enter into our discussion, let me again use Susan Sontag’s words. In At the Same Time, Sontag 
says, “A writer is first of  all a reader. It is from reading that I derive the standards by which I 
measure my own work and according to which I fall lamentably short. It is from reading, even 
before writing, that I became part of  a community—the community of  literature—which 
includes more dead than living writers.” This suggests a relationship between reader and writer 
which do not occur, as the title of  the book suggests, at the same time. Reading is a priori, 
whereas writing is a posteriori. Or put simply: reading precedes writing. It is not just a matter of  
human development that we acquire our reading literacy prior to writing caliber. It is, rather, a 
determination. Having been nourished and fascinated by the wise words of  so many writers, one, 
perhaps without warning, decides to change one’s position, one’s identity, from observer to 
participant, from consumer to producer, from reader to writer, from appreciator to one hoping 
be appreciated rather than neglected. But this change of  position (some would see it as a leap) is 
not necessary; one can remain a keen reader for his or her lifetime without the thought of  taking 
up writing as a vocation. We all know that a truly enthusiastic reader is no less respectable than a 
writer. 
 
Taking this line of  readers proceeding to writers, one tends to talk about influence. Writers are 
often asked: What writers influence you the most (especially during your early periods of  writing)? 
An exemplary exposition can be found in Joyce Carol Oates’ The Faith of a Writer - Life ,Craft, Art, 
in which the prolific author recounts in detail the influence of  certain writers on others 
(especially the chapter “To a Young Writer”), in such a clarity that literature seems to form a line 
of  ancestry. While tracing influence has value on its own, a clear lineage seems dubious to me. 
Influence is more like an enigma that exists always in a vague form. Talking about the world of  
books that influence him, Polish director Krzysztof  Kieslowski says: “It's not true that it was 
only a world of  Camus and Dostoevsky. They were a part of  it, but it was also a world of  
cowboys and Indians, Tom Sawyer and all those heroes. It was bad literature as well as good, and 
I read both with equal interest. I can't say whether I learnt more from Dostoevsky or from some 
third-rate American writer who wrote cowboy adventures. I don't know. And I wouldn't like to 
make any such classifications.” Perhaps this rings more true in our postmodern context, where 
the boundary between high and popular culture blurs. 
 
At the Same Time 
 
But reading and writing are more a matter of  order and influence. We are simultaneously readers 
and writers. Things become more complicated when we, as writers, read our own works. Sontag, 
in John Darnton’s collection Writers on Writing, again makes writing subservient to reading: “To 
write is to practice, with particular intensity and attentiveness, the art of  reading”, or, as Ibsen 
inscribed: “To write is to sit in judgment on oneself.” 
 
You are the first reader of  your own work. In terms of  judgment, you are in fact assuming a 
different role, that of  the critic‘s. It is through self-criticism that one continues to rewrite before 
publication. However, a writer may not be a good reader of  his or her own work. We may lose 
track of  our work, being sometimes too benign, keeping redundant words which we feel painful 
to kill, and sometimes too cruel, tearing apart manuscripts which are good indeed. We know 
what is best, and yet we are inaccurate readers of  our own work. “Insiders lose the way,” 
therefore writers turn to a close friend or a wise editor as an external judge before making work 
public. Once published, there are writers who decline to return to their works for years. Some 
even buried them. Jorge Luis Borges, when asked about his earlier fictions, replied: “I destroyed 
them. They are poorly written.” So the writer-as-reader is indeed a complex species of  animal. 
 
Far more complex is that the existence of  writer and reader in one’s body and soul is not 
symbiotic. The two disturb one another. I always think that this disruptiveness is the essence of  a 
writer. As a writer, you live while you watch yourself  living. You write while you watch yourself  
writing. You are simultaneously the director and the actor. You are the performer and the 
audience at the same time. You enter constantly into an internal dialogue. Writers are by nature 
“schizophrenic,” not in any psychotic sense, but in the sense that you can’t help splitting yourself  
into two, distancing yourself  on a higher level as a reader of  your own being, a quality of  
“self-reflexivity” deemed necessary for writers. The writing self ’s “heightened awareness of  
being” counteracts the living self ’s “forgetfulness of  being” (in Heidegger’s term). All writers 
lead double lives in this respect. 
 
Writer as a “non-reader” 
 
I may have gone too far discussing the intrinsic qualities of  writers. Let me return to reading and 
writing in a textual sense. Can a writer be a “non-reader”? Susan Sontag, again in Writers on 
Writing tells a story I find particularly interesting. While speaking to V. S. Naipaul, she once 
mentioned a nineteenth-century English novel she loved, a very well-known novel that she 
assumed everyone who cared for literature as she did would admire. It turned out that Naipaul 
had not read it. Seeing the surprise on Sontag’s face, Naipaul added sternly: “Susan, I’m a writer, 
not a reader.” 
 
Naipaul’s point seems contrary to the customary conception of  writers. While it is hard to 
imagine a choreographer who is not a spectator, a composer who is not a listener, a director who 
is not a film buff, it is not impossible to conceive of  a writer who is not an expert reader. In the 
sphere of  words, art practice and art appreciation may differ more. I know a writer who 
deliberately shunned books for a year – as a kind of  retreat after long years of  being submerged 
in books. I know some Chinese writers who were not very well educated and had been deprived 
of  chances to read books, who wrote masterpieces by simply drawing from deep life experiences. 
 
I am not trying to downplay the importance of  reading. But if  reading is a window leading us 
into the lives of  others, experience is our own treasure house (imagination is another character 
of  the Writing “Trinity”, which allows us to transcend reading and experience for some 
moments; but for the limit of  scope let me just mention it in passing). Contemporary Chinese 
writer Yu Wah once said, in a book entitled The Power of  Literature: “I think reading is very 
important, but not as important as life experience. My life experience shapes me into the type of  
writer I am.” A Chinese proverb says, “Better to walk ten thousand miles of  road than to read 
ten thousand scrolls of  books.” It seems that even many generations ago, the Chinese recognized 
the disparity between reading and life experience. Of  course, the two are not antithetical. As a 
writer, I always aspire to immerse myself  in both senses. 
 
That being said, I must add that while reading can be pursued through our own efforts, life 
experience cannot be attained the same way. To a certain extent, we are thrown into and live in a 
certain time and space, bounded by a social ethos and cultural context larger than our own. The 
venerated co-founder of  the International Writing Program, Nieh Hauling, once remarked to Lo 
Yi-chin and me that we are the fourth generation of  Chinese writers visiting Iowa. The fourth 
generation, compared to the generations that preceded us, lives in a time of  peace and prosperity, 
a time that also seems uneventful, a time free of  the political turmoil of  Taiwan’s White Terror 
or China’s Cultural Revolution. In this global era, our lives are specially fitted to be cogs in the 
machine of  our capitalist and consumerist society. We are blessed but pale. It is in this larger 
paleness that reading plays an even greater role in our lives. If  the leg of  our experience shrinks, 
we must strengthen the leg of  reading to compensate. Whether we will become a generation of  
“lame” writers, I don’t know. I confess that I am of  the reader-as-writer sort, fretting about 
words in books. I believe, however, that “armchair writers” can still be a good breed, reflecting 
on mundane lives and ordinary people. I cherish each moment I am able to leave my armchair to 
wander as a flâneur, if  not a pilgrim, as I do now during my expedition to Iowa in this precious 
moment. 


The Writer as Reader – the Complexities of “as”

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The Writer as Reader – the Complexities of “as”

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