Creative and intellectual projects are always attended by a degree of irony. Like, for example, the Russian formalists wanted to take a very scientific and calculated approach to analysing literature, but the ideas they came up with are quite poetic and esoteric. Defamiliarisation is one concept that they developed. The idea, as I understand it, is that the way literature works is that it mediates and slows down perception and that gives us a sense of perceiving things as if for the first time. Like, if you look at a flower, you perceive it directly and your thoughts about it, if you have any, flow automatically, and thoughts move very quickly. But, if you read a literary description of a flower, your thoughts are forced down a certain track and they have to follow what is written. Language moves more slowly than thought. That slowing down is what gives literature its beauty and power.
The best stories take you off in an unexpected direction...they transport you, and when you know something about the story before reading it - like, if it's a famous story - you wonder how what you're reading is going to lead back to the point of the story as you know it. So, there's a detour/ a delay. And the journey is often far, far superior to the caricature of a story that you imagined or heard about. Frankenstein is a perfect example. This novel is a phenomenon. Mary Shelley wrote about Frankenstein as being a monster that she was releasing out into the world, and that's astonishingly true because the novel gave birth to a myth that has a life of its own and is very different and distinct from the novel.
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