When I read an excerpt of, for example, an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel or a quote from a poem by John Keats, what am I missing? What am I gaining?
I miss two things: 1) The rest of the story; and 2) Developing the skill required to recognize the remarkable.
I gain one thing: 1) Time.
I’m beginning to think that I should stop reading the excerpts and start reading the novels, poems and other works that are excerpted. How can I claim to have lived my own life – to have found my own path – to produce anything original if I have no understanding of that which surrounds the exceptional? That is, if I am to be exceptional, I must know the unexceptional as well.