The Tune and the Event
January 6th, 2006 | Published in Books & Reading, Quotes, Music, Literature
As the unmusical listener wants only the Tune, so the unliterary reader wants only the Event. The one ignores nearly all the sounds the orchestra is actually making; he wants to hum the tune. The other ignores nearly all that the words before him are doing; he wants to know what happened next.
—C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (1961), p. 30