It is even possible, I suppose, to describe the work that an audience must do as a passive rather than an active kind of work. Insofar as the audience that is most likely to get something out of a novel, or a painting, or a film, or what have you (if it can be said that there is anything to be ‘gotten’ out of art, which I am not certain there is), is one that is able to gather the more strident energies of their ego into something that resembles a pond whose surface is exceedingly calm, so that the slightest disturbance to it will create ripples.