Response #3

Reading Response #3 Shae Hughes

In the terms of reading there are some people who look at it as more than just scanning your eyes on an ink stamped paper. Sven Birkets, a critic and book reviewer, writes an essay that makes readers start to dissect and take an in depth look at the art and history behind reading. Birkets reaches out in his essay called, “The Owl Has Flown,” to try to more or less teach people the essence of reading.
To convey his explanation there is a certain word that he defines and expresses in the essay. Resonance (noun)- The quality or state of being (Wikipedia). Birkets displays this word in way to make readers look at how they can interpret written passages in order to become wiser on that certain passage. For example, when you read, let’s say a news paper article, Birkets states that we as readers tend to skim through the passage not absorbing the knowledge that lies inside of it. In his terms, to grasp the underlying content we need to read in depth. Which could simply just come from reading the article over and over picking up the points that you didn’t quite get the first few times through. The underlying concept of course would be something like the overall point of the article that tends to express the writers emotions. The true wisdom, as Birkets states, comes from resonating to the article, which roughly means a certain unexplained connection.
“Awed and intimidated by the availability of texts, faced with the all but impossible task of discrimination among them, the reader tends to move across surfaces, skimming, hastening from one site to the next without allowing the words to resonate inwardly.” This is a passage from Birkets essay that explains how he is displaying to his audience, the need to let knowledge soak in. All too often readers are guilty of reading painfully long articles of writing and 15 minutes into the article they cannot recall the last 14 minutes of what they have read. Birkets example holds some prose. To use the works of William Shakespeare, a person can read over and skim through it but will never understand the ideas. According Birkets you must read it slow and repetitiously to achieve and understand the underlying meaning. As he states, when this is accomplished, you gain the wisdom from the text.
I find it ironic and humorous that of all readings in our class to connect to Birket’s own essay, his essay is the hardest to understand. In order to grasp Birket’s underlying meanings about underlying meanings, you have to go through his work with the same techniques proposed by him. He hides the meanings in ways that just by skimming through his work makes it next to impossible to understand. I am not sure if this is accidental, that he mistakenly wrote a very difficult to understand essay over the span of 6 pages. I am not sure if Birkets is an extremely educated individual that likes to flaunt is intelligent to a dumber crowd. I am not sure if he wrote it in this way to convey the point and underlying meanings of his work. What I am sure about though is, when you are able to finally resonate with his essay, it will be worth every single overeducated word.