Books: Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?
Nick CarrawayI just finished reading a book for the first time in awhile. It's not that I don't read much, because I have my nose in the news stories, magazine articles, books, emails, blogs, etc. all day long. However, rarely do I read novels to their completion anymore, which in a way saddens me because it reflects upon my ever shortening attention span. But in another way it makes getting to that last page of a book all the more rewarding to me which is why I'm proud to say that I've just finished reading a 400+ page novel, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The book is an early 90s novel in the genre of cyberpunk (an acquired taste of mine, not necessarily for everyone) which is aptly described on the back cover by the San Francisco Bay Chronicle as a cross between Gibson's Neuromancer and Pynchon's Vineland. I'd be happy to give a more detailed review of the novel to anyone who is interested, but for this post I'd rather discuss the experience of reading any book, more than this particular book itself.
Like so many others, Snow Crash was purchased with good intention, given a few cursory glances to its cover description, but eventually fell off my night stand after some forlorned attempts to get past the first few chapters. Fortunately, two months sitting pool side observing other happy readers encouraged me to give the book the old third or fourth college try. And as with other hobbies which I frequently claim I'd like to spend more time on, summer leisure was the catalyst that actually changed my once empty promises into deeper commitments; that and a certain measure of guilt stemming from my perceived literary deficiencies. I saw so many people picking up titles from their school summer reading lists or selecting one of the innumerable James Patterson works from cheap beach book stores. From text messaging, to cool teenagers who sneered at reading "whole books" back in early June to gruff 60 year old men whose usual conversation rarely went beyond sports banter and drinking stories, most had finished books by August, except for me. So determining to do better, I used many lazy pool hours and some boring air travel downtime to catch up on my reading before September fully set in.
What is it about the act of reading hundreds of pages of small, black and white text that inspires in people such a love-hate relationship for reading? It seems there are only a few types of readers out there. There are those who claim to absolutely love books and spend most of their free time either reading or talking about what they have recently read and what is next on their list. Then there are those who flat out refuse to read books at all. They give many kinds of excuses, like the juvenile "I hate reading", the perennial cop out of "I just don't have time", or even outright claims of illiteracy despite living in one of the most highly educated countries in the world. Lastly there's the fledging, wanna be readers like me, masquerading in their literary ambitions but rarely living up to their inflated standards of what it means to be a bookworm.
Yet most people, no matter which category they belong to, harbor some innate desire to crack the mysteries contained in books. Even those in the "I hate reading" camp secretly want to know why everybody else is so fascinated with the written word. I ran into one of these types recently who went so far as buying a book that he suspected of containing valuable and interesting ideas and then giving it to his wife to read, so that she could fill him in on what he was missing. His excuse for not doing it himself: "I don't read." The book title: "His Needs, Her Needs." I guess there is still some vital information that can not be adequately explained in pictures, video, or websites. Until we find a better medium, the book remains the best format that can do justice to the most interesting topics.
If one agrees with the book's superiority in the realm of information carrying media, then shouldn't we all be members of the book lovers' club? For them, the unmatched ability of a book to capture the subtle emotional moments of the human experience or to explain and elaborate on the complexities of science or philosophy makes it hard to think anyone would choose two hours of TV over a novel. If we have a sincere desire to better understand our world or to seek a form of entertainment that expands our mind instead of weakening it, then why aren't we all reading as much as we can? There certainly is no lack of selection or availability of books, yet it feels like something is definitely standing in the way of our progress as a nation of book readers.
While I agree that regular book reading is an admirable goal, I don't have any solutions for improving the reading habits of America. I could say that we should stop being so mentally lazy, but there are plenty of smart, hard working people who don't read. I could say we need to turn off the video games, cell phones and laptops, but even these devices can be used to deliver text based narratives that are just about on par with any story waiting at the local library. Almost, but not quite. There is still something special about flipping back a worn book cover and reading words paper pages that came back to me after I finished this last novel.
Aside from an interesting back story on the neurolinguistic theories about the ancient Sumerian culture and a lot of action scenes involving samauri swords and high speed motorcycle chases through cyberspace, I learned a few things from my reading of Snow Crash that I hope will help me read more often in the future. First, don't be afraid to give books a second, third or even fourth try. Sometimes it takes awhile for our mental state to gel with a book's content or style. Second, hang around other readers who can give us good suggestions and steer us away from unsatisfying reads. And finally, if there is a single best time to read, it is when we're on vacation, whether physically there or at least there in our minds. Reading is at its best when we are relaxed, either by a pool or in our bedroom after a stressful day at work. It is an exercise in intellectual focus and physical quietude that we can't neglect just because we are caught up in the hectic motion of daily life and mentally frazzled.
As the young heroine of Snow Crash, Y.T. puts it in her hip futuristic slang, "There was this dude named Ahab that I read about. He got his poon cable all wrapped up around the thing he was trying to poon. It was a big mistake. I guess he just didn't know when to let go."
Reader Comments (6)
I enjoyed your post and I agree with it. How and Why does reading draw such passion? People have an opinion on reading, and in my experience it usually falls towards antipathy, instead of apathy or fanaticism. I think when most people think of reading it is novels. It is the longer works that people stay away from. I can garner that movies were not forced down our throats by our schools (but they were by media) and so many people have associated books with cranky teachers, homework, and the end of summer. This association has not helped people foster a love for reading.
And yet, you never hear anyone say "I hate the radio" or "I hate television". They just take it when it comes and find that it is an enjoyable medium to experience entertainment, learning, or the news. Someone can say that they hate paintings. Why do they hate it? Why do they not see that painting is a valuable medium of expression. They do not have to draw any more than they have to write when they read. Yet, they still think reading is a waste of time or too much work for what they get out of it.
It is an active experience but all medium requires some activity of thought and processing. Reading requires more, like paintings, but not to the extent of exhaustion. It requires a time commitment, but the radio and television requires the same. But it is something that is done in silence and alone. This may be what chases people away. It is a solitary journey of discovery that requires total concentration depending on what you read. And that is it, everyone can find something they like to read, from the rudimentary to the complex. But when one is approached with the question, "Do you read?", they feel that they mean works of art. Imagine asking someone, "Do you like television? or the "Do you like radio". the answer would be yes.
Why does reading get such a bad wrap? I think it is a combination of silence, concentration, and the drilling of reading as primarily a school activity -- and most people did not enjoy school -- at least on some level, even if it only was that you had to attend.
Finally, I enjoy reading. I enjoy all types of reading: from sports books (days), biographies(days), essays (thelunchbreakbreak 6 minutes), poems (minutes) to literary works (days, weeks, years, never finished) because it helps me to be alone and I choose what I want to read. I choose when I want to stop. I choose if it was good or bad. Most of all, I love when I meet someone who has read something I did, because there is a connection of exclusivity of someone who is willing to take time and effort to self discover.
I hope reading does not go away. But it must be done at home. It must be a priority. It is truly a intellectual pursuit and the one that takes us closer to the ultimate goal: personal expression in writing or art. I hope people become proud of their hobby and one day, it will be our past time as a country. If we can just get one night a week where we just read at home and no one watches television - this accessible and (can be free) affordable medium can restore its reputation and importance it once had in helping the world grow democratic.
Thanks again
Good post. I am glad you finished a book. Sometimes, though, it is the book, and not the reader, that delays the achievement of getting to that last page. I love to read, and there have been times when I decided not to finish a book because of the writing style, or maybe the plot was all over the place, or the characters stereotypical. Then there are other times when I find an author I can really connect with, and I will race through everything I can find by that author. This summer I discovered Joseph Finder, and actually read 5 of his books in the last month. I would read more but the others are out of print.
Another interesting twist: Many avid readers are also writers or would-be novelists. And the bare bones truth is, while I have written 2 and a half novels over the past 17 years, I am afraid to put them out there, for fear the reader will not like the writing style, or will think the plot is all over the place and the characters are stereotypical.
But the more one reads, the better one's writing becomes. I should be pretty good at it by now!
Great piece. I just got around to reading it, because I've actually been reading as much as I could the past few days. I also struggled to read a lot this summer, but I will come to both our defense's and argue that the amount of intellectual effort we have placed into the blog, especially the writing, this summer is a worthy supplement to reading great literature. However, you raise an excellent point about the love/hate relationship with the reading of literature, novels especially.
I liken it to the love/hate relationship people have with exercise. People know they should perform both because they have value, but they refuse to commit the time and effort it takes to practice each well. The only difference is that I feel reading has a harder battle to fight because it receives little to no publicity. When was the last time you saw an advertisement on TV for a new book. Never! Right? Why not? If the powerful people of the world are all well-read and have the influence to change the emphasis, why don't they? Is it possible that the people of influence truly want an illiterate society? Or, are they illiterate themselves?
Dugan brings up some great points by addressing the fact that we breed alienation from reading in schools at a very early age. We have created a phobia by placing such importance on reading in schools through testing and then labeling kids when they fail to meet the standard. Would you really want to keep reading if you were told at the age of 5, 6, 7, or 8 that you were below basic and then had to receive special attention or be withdrawn from class to get extra help doing something that is supposed to be so basic? The negative stigma we assign to kids at such a young age is definitely what caused this antipathy that Dugan noted.
Then there is the possibility that reading at the level you are at is truly a unique skill, one that is under-appreciated and taken for granted by yourself as well. I know extremely bright people who do not read because they never had the capacity to appreciate it at the level that others, like you and me, can. We create unrealistic expectations on people today, and I think the ability to read at a higher-order, meta-cognitive level is one that simply can not be fulfilled, no matter how much people read.
Agreed....I would love to see ads for books on TV...instead of ads for drugs.
Good points from all of the commentors. It seems to me that reading is very much a personal pursuit. And as much as we would like to see advertising and promotion in mainstream culture, the sad truth is that there is just too many distractions. The most telling exchange I had with readers this summer was when I talked about books to teenagers who were reluctant to see the value in summer reading. I told them that reading in general made you smarter. That the brain was like a muscle that needed to be exercised and that just watching the movie version of a book wasn't as strenuous for the brain. It amazed me that they had such a hard time accepting that reading made you smarter; I guess since I take it for granted. However, the teens who did read often and at a high level had no problem accepting my point. This view of reading has to come at an early age. I believe that parents play the biggest role in advocating this view of reading as key in cognitive development. All people, kids or adults, have an intrinsic desire to become smarter, but some also have an intrinsic distrust of teachers and schools, especially if it has brought a negative stereotype on them in class and in front of their peers. That's why, as Dugan points out, reading and writing, as Mangio notices, must be fundamentally personal experiences. And as such, one's family and immediate culture plays a large role in encouraging reading at a young age, before the distractions of mainstream entertainment and skepticism of peers overcomes one's desire for mental improvement.
Interesting post, Nick. Especially the learning about the right time in a person's life for a particular book.
Very early in my writing career I was searching for a new book to read and happened to ask an English teacher for the name of her favorite novel. Without hesitating he said "A Passage to India" the 1924 E,M. Forster novel of the relationships among a group of diverse Indian and English characters in a Colonial India. I brought the book, I tried, I tried again but I couldn't get passed the first few pages. Was it the highly stylized writing at a time when I had shed Jane Austen and embaced Strunk and White? Was I fearful of its influence on my new, carefully cultivated spare style? Was it the characters? My ignorance of India's political and cultural history? Perhaps a combination of all those things? For whatever reason9s), I had paid 2 percent of my very meager reporter's salary to purchase a book that just sat their on my bookshelf reminding me of good intentions gone astray. Last week I happened on the book again in a dark corner at the bottom of a bookshelf. I opened it, and am now fully engrossed in its linguistic and cultural pleasures.
What had changed? Years of living by the pen/computer have left me confident that I can choose the style in which I write and I now can appreciate his eloquence without fearing that I will absorb and parrot it. Writing for an Indian magazine has increased my knowledge and interest in India and the variety of cultures that make up country, so I can appreciate the story and the characters. Also, just being in a more patient time of life leaves me open to the book.
So yes, choose books you know to be good, and if they don't work for you wait it a second, third or fourth try. Some books you just have to grow into.