书桌上恰好有一本Norton文选（The Norton Reader, 7th ed.），打开前些天提到的Nabokov的短文——“好读者和好作家”（Good readers and good writers）——他颠覆了我们通常坚持的一些读书观点（如从小说认识过去）：Can we rely on Jane Austen’s picture of landowning England with baronets and landscaped grounds when all she knew was a clergyman’s parlor? 那么，抱着那个观点读书的人就不会是好读者喽。我还真的想从小说去熟悉当年的生活呢，而且相信它比历史更真实。在老纳（Nab.，不是“老衲”）看来，小说其实就是童话，而且是童话里的童话（“The truth is that great novels are great fairy tales—and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales”）。我喜欢童话，不做好读者。

老纳曾向同学们提出过10个选项，让每个人选出他心目中的“好读者”的元素：

1. The reader should belong to a book club.

2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine.

3. The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle.

4. The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none.
5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie.

6. The reader should be a budding author.

7. The reader should have imagination.

8. The reader should have memory.

9. The reader should have a dictionary.

10. The reader should have some artistic sense.

他认为，好读者的要素是后面四点，也就是要做一个“四有新人”：有想象力，有记忆力，有一本字典，有一点艺术的感受力。这个标准似乎太低了，而做起来实在不容易——因为“想象力”的想象空间太大了，而字典，好多同学可能都不用了吧？