The Art of X-Ray Reading by Roy Peter Clark

Author:Roy Peter Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2015-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

Notice the quick shift of point of view, from the boy turning his head both ways, which could be seen by those below, to the glowing safety net, which can only be seen from the perspective of the jumping boy.

DETAILS OF CHARACTER AND STORY

While I’ve described these movements—from close-up to distance—as cinematic or literary, what makes them most powerful is that they are human. It is the way we see. As I sit at my computer, I see letters track across my screen as my hands move about the keyboard. I look up and to the right and see on the wall a political campaign poster from the 1930s featuring my grandfather Peter Marino. I look down at my left hand and see a tiny scar in the shape of a star sustained thirty years ago in a softball game. Now I look up and see a blast of light and blue sky through the skylight above my desk. A crisscross of oak beams supports the structure. My eyes return to the computer screen. Keyboard, poster, scar, skylight, keyboard.

Why turn your notebook into a camera? When it comes to the marriage of craft and purpose, novelist Joseph Conrad said it best: “My task… is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—all you demand—and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.” Make me see.

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