> No Spoilers.
This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
Still, I think "spoiler alert" is a lot better in cases like these than "no spoilers." It gives freedom of choice to the reader.
Says who? What if I want to read literature for the plot? What if the excitement of what's going to happen is what I care about, and the characters are just a side thing?
What if some days I want to read for plot, other days I want world building, other days I want character development?
> Learning the plot of a literature book should have no affect in its enjoyment.
And if it does affect it? Should we tell people not to read that book?
In fact, foreknowledge of plot and detail color your experience of reading the book such that successive rereads each have a different character in many cases.
Imagine the first time you read a book like The Time Traveler's Wife, Life of Pi, Never Let Me Go, A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo, or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Now, imagine the second time reading through any of those books; the experience will be greatly changed by the knowledge and anticipation of what you know is coming.
Some people may not think that change in experience is important, but some definitely will. I don't think there's any reason to look down on either group, nor to look down on people who chose to respect the latter.
"Incidentally, I use the word reader very loosely. Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is—a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)—a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book."
I mean, just like how we all know, in broad strokes, the story of the titanic, most of us have some idea of the plot to some works of classic literature that we haven't read.
Just like they did in the 60s ... and the 20s ... and during the French revolution ... and 100 times before and in between those ... Now don't get me wrong, there is something new everytime. Like pictures in the 20s. Recorded music in the 60 (the drugs, I'm afraid, date back longer than recorded history. Sure. Not the exact same drugs. The abuse of them, and the scale of the abuse). But especially don't compare today with the French revolutionaries, because someone might look up what the revolutionaries did once they got what they wanted (as if that's any guarantee the evolution now will be the same, but it is a possibility).
But No ! You keep hearing it's different this time. But we have Google now ! And it's the "first" time ever we see the evil of the church/faith. And we're finally going to eliminate racism, that's the first time ever.
Many people actually believe that such things are new, but ...
Nope, the Roman Republic did that (with about as mixed a success as we did. In some places, they succeeded. Elsewhere ...), and very likely ancient Egypt was a mixed white/black society at least for a period, as was Rome. Which meant the fight for equality is probably older than the concept of a building with first floor, as that didn't exist in the early Egypt. In other words: everything about humans, especially how society is organised, things like families, faith, law, state organisation, is not just old, it's very very very very old. Most of it probably older than the pyramids.
But at the same time, if a book has stood the test of time of 120-years... the spoiler probably would only very slightly diminish my enjoyment of it. For example, even knowing the plot of the Sherlock Holmes stories and William Poe's mystery poems, I still get enjoyment from re-reading them, in a way that I don't from Dan Brown, for example.