"good readers"

This little piece was so fascinating to read.  I read it, in part because it was of the assignment, and in other, because I wanted to be both a "good" reader and writer, mostly because I felt that I had not achieved the former to the extend that I could.  Certain parts of it, though, I did not understand.  He first "debunks" the conventional method of reading and bringing oneself into the world of the book—by identifying and relating oneself to the world and the characters of the book.  It is "the worst thing a reader can do" when one identifies oneself with a character in the book.  Instead of this "lowly variety," Nobokov wants readers to use "impersonal imagination and artistic delight."  Impersonal.  That is against everything that I've ever creatively done in my artistic journey.  The point was always to be personal, to connect with people.  Nobokov continues on to elaborate more by saying that "we ought to remain a little aloof and take pleasure in this aloofness while at the same time we keenly enjoy—passionately enjoy, enjoy with tears and shivers—the inner weave of a given masterpiece."  But how could one enjoy so passionately that one comes to tears and shivers without being personal?  Why is it wrong to be personal.  Or more specifically, why is it correct to be impersonal?

I have two theories.  And maybe it's one or the other, or a combination of both.  Firstly, being personal distracts us from truly having artistic delight.  It binds us from seeing a work of literature as an artistic form in every intentional way and appreciate it as such that, because, when we put ourselves in the picture, the novel, then the novel becomes about us, and how and whether we connect to it or not, rather than marveling at the world that the author has created.  Secondly, Nobokov didn't want to be associated with the characters that he wrote or would write.  He didn't want to be limited to the amount and the dimensions of the characters he could create because he would later be compared to them as the author.  Or better, he wanted to hide the fact that he was, in some ways, like Humbert in Lolita.

"Literature is invention.  Fiction is fiction.  To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth."  Aren't all forms of truths some forms of stories?  "Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature... The writer of fiction only follows Nature's lead."  Nobokov is justifying his deceitfulness.