A Midyear Reflection on the State of my Research
I do a lot of reading; it’s part of my job description as a graduate student. I read all types of works: newspaper articles, opinion pieces, scientific data, political diatribe, etc. I also read quite a bit of Chinese literature and modern scholarship on such works. Recently, it occurred to me that I have lost, to some degree at least, my love of reading for pleasure, especially reading works of fiction. I tend to get lost in critical works, the argumentative polemics and rhetorical strategies of academic work published in scholarly periodicals, but I realized that I rarely, if ever, spend significant time reading fiction anymore. This is disconcerting, disturbing even, because not all reading is the same; different genres can produce wildly different effects. For example, exploring the universes of the future plotted out by science fiction writers or contemplating the power of language in historical settings recreated by dramatists shows the infinite possible worlds existing when authors indulge in fictive landscapes. Fictional works simultaneously reflect a multiplicity of voices and viewpoints in a way that other artistic mediums seem hard-pressed to duplicate. The way authors choose to arrange their plots, create characters, and manipulate
