Read the following passage and answer the question that follow:
A novel is a two way street, in which the labour required on either side is, equal. Reading, done properly, is every bit as tough as writing. As for those people who align reading with the essentially passive experience of watching television, they only wish to debase reading and readers. The more accurate analogy is that of the amateur musician placing her sheet music on the stand and preparing to play. She must use her own, hard-won, skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift she gives the composer, and the composer gives her.
This is a conception of "reading" we rarely hear now. And yet, when you spend time with a book and practise reading the old moral of effort and reward is undeniable. Reading is a skill, and an art and readers should take pride in their abilities and have no shame in cultivating them if for no other reason than the fact that writers need you. To respond to the ideal writer takes an ideal reader, one who is open enough to allow into their own mind a picture of human consciousness radically different from their own. The ideal reader steps up to the plate of the writer's style so that together writer and reader might hit the ball out of the park.
What I'm saying is, a reader must have quite a lot of talent, because even the most talented reader will find much of the land of literature tricky terrain. For how many of us fell the world to be as Kafka felt it, too impossibly foreshortened to ride from one village to the next? Or can imagine a world without nouns, as Barges did? How many are willing to be as emotionally generous as Dickens, or to take religious faith as seriously as did Graham Geene? Readers fail writers just as often as writers fail readers. Readers fail when they allow themselves to believe the old mantra that fiction is the thing you relate to and writers the amenable people you seek out when you want to have your own version of the world confirmed and reinforced. That is certainly one of the many things fiction can do, but it's a conjurer's trick within a far deeper magic. To become better readers and writers we have to ask of each other a little bit more.
"This is a conception of reading we rarely hear now".
In this statement, the writer is referring to the conception:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → that the reader uses his best skills to understand the writer and this rewards him
The statement comes right after the analogy of the musician, who must use her own hard-won skills to play; the greater her skill, the greater the gift she gives the composer and the composer gives her. The conception the writer refers to is this one: reading as a skill that demands effort and brings its own reward, which she calls "the old moral of effort and reward".
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: that the reader finds literature a tricky terrain — Incorrect. Wrong part of the passage: the writer does say this in the third paragraph, but as a separate point; it is not the conception of reading described just before the statement.
Option 2: that the reader equates reading with watching television — Incorrect. Contradicted: this is the view the writer rejects: such people only wish to debase reading. It is a common view, not one we rarely hear.
Option 3: that the reader imagines himself to be a musician — Incorrect. Misread: the musician is only an analogy for the reader's skill; the reader does not imagine himself to be one.