Passive Reading?

A question, or thought, was raised today in Lit Crit that really set the mental wheels a-turning. It was suggested that the process of reading may make the reader "passive in the face of someone else's imagination."

As always seems to be the case, I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with that statement. For me the passivity of reading falls into the category of "it all depends." Naturally I can agree that what we are reading when we pick up a book, or poem, or newspaper, or journal, etc. was created out of the imagination of another. So of course their imagination influences what is created. Nevertheless, in order to truly read and interact with a text (whatever type of text it might be) we must also use our imaginations. You can't just read a passage like: "The hunchback stood at the end of the pit, his pale face lighted by the soft glow from the smoldering oak fire...the hunchback's ears were wiggling furiously on his head...He fluttered his eyelids, so that they were like pale, trapped moths in his sockets. He scraped his feet around on the ground, waved his hands about, and finally began doing a little trotlike dance" (McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, 48-49) without picturing the hunchback in your own mind, taking the words from the page and molding them with your own imagination until you have your own version of the author's vision "doing a little trotlike dance" in your head. In fact, many times I find that the author is more at the mercy of our imaginations than we are at his or hers! After all, if we do not agree with a text, or find it distasteful in any way, we can put it down and never bother with it again. But an author has no such measure of control over how his (or her) work is interpreted and changed by the imagination of the readers.

Of course, although I think it essential to use one's imagination when reading, I do realize that there are some people who choose not to, out of laziness, or want of practice, I do not know. I do know that it is possible to get through a book or poem without adding anything of your own to the reading, but I feel that it is a conscious decision on the part of the reader not to participate. I think that reading is only passive if we make it passive. In its truest state, I do not think reading is at all passive.