So I was reading Everything Is Illuminated, mainly because my sister was holding a very crowded cast party at our house and since I do not like crowds I resided to the quiet and comfort of my room (but the room was not very comfortable, however, because the air conditioning was on full blast so my bedroom was more like an ice box).
I started where I had left off, somewhere in the story where Brod was married and where her husband became insane and all.
I read, not realizing that I was daydreaming while I was reading. I was missing the most important bits, the bits that had more meaning to them than the action in the story itself. The little bits and pieces of wisdom that I was just tossing aside, I was more interested in reading about the love and the sex and the unanswered questions.
So I stopped myself. I reread those bits and pieces I had missed, and stopped reading for a few minutes to savor them (and to savor a snack).
I think, in order to really get something out of a book, you can't rush it, like how you would rush doing your math homework right before school because you didn't do it.
I think reading (and most definitely writing) is comparable to making art.
Even though you aren't creating anything in the literal sense, you are creating ideas, realizations, and bits of wisdom. You need to take breaks between every few pages, think about what you read, think about what it means, and how it applies to everyone, not just the characters in the book.
Like with art, if you rush a piece, some people will be able to tell that it is sloppy, rushed, and not very high quality. And when you look at your own piece, you may think it looks ok, maybe even nice, but you'll never look at your rushed piece and go, "Wow!"
But when you take your time, think about it, add more meaning to your picture besides just painting a portrait of someone you don't even know, adding something to be deciphered and interpreted, I think that's really when you enter that own personal niche of wisdom.
So don't rush anything. Take your time, savor everything to its fullest extent.
Back to the point, anyway..
I noticed how Alex was really the better writer than Safran, because Alex did not pay attention to the misuse of words, or how awkwardly he phrased his sentences, unlike Safran. Instead, he focused on the little bits of wisdom, questioning them, perhaps even over analyzing them.
It's a little ironic, however, how in the beginning of the book, I assumed Safran to be the wiser one, and for Alex to be the idiotic show off man-whore. The places were swapped near the ending of the book, Safran may be smart, book smart, but he doesn't have the kind of intelligence and wisdom that Alex holds, and you really see that develop in the book.
One of the little bits of wisdom was how people in general like to hear lies, even if they know it is a lie. They want to be told over and over again that everything will be ok, everything will be ok, everything will be ok. But they know that everything is not ok.
Eventually, they become sad because they aren't being sad from the truth. They now want to be able to take on the burden that they should have taken, but they were too late for that. It is the realization that they have been living in a false world. And then they get the sickly feeling of emptiness, that feeling that they are missing something, even if that something would have been something that they may have not liked at the time of receiving it.
At least it would have been something instead of nothing.
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