Reading/Distraction
The following passage is adapted from an essay entitled “The Lost Art of Reading” (2009 by David Ulin).
- Sometime late last year, I
- noticed I was having trouble
- sitting down to read. That’s
- a problem if you do what I
- do, but it’s an even bigger
- problem if you’re the kind
- of person I am. Since I
- discovered reading, I’ve
- always been surrounded by
- stacks of books. I read my
- way through camp, school,
- nights, weekends; when my
- girlfriend and I backpacked
- through Europe, I had to buy
- a suitcase to accommodate the
- books I picked up along the
- way. For her, the highlight
- of the trip was the man in
- Florence who offered a
- tour of the Uffizi. For me, it
- was the serendipity of
- stumbling across a London
- bookstall that had once been
- owned by the Scottish writer
- Alexander Trocchi, whose work
- I adored.
- In his 1967 memoir,
- “Stop-Time,” Frank Conroy
- describes his initiation into
- literature as an adolescent.
- “I’d lie in bed . . . and read one
- paperback after another until
- two or three in the morning…
- The real world dissolved and I
- was free to drift in fantasy,
- living a thousand lives, each
- one more powerful, more
- accessible, and more real than
- my own.” I know that boy: I
- was that boy. And I have
- always read like that, although
- these days, I find myself
- driven by the idea that in the
- one-to-one attention they
- require, books are not tools to
- retreat from but rather to
- understand and interact with
- the world.
- So what happened? It isn’t a
- failure of desire so much as
- one of will. Or not will, exactly,
- but focus: the ability to still
- my mind long enough to
- inhabit someone else’s world,
- and to let that someone else
- inhabit mine. Reading is an
- act of contemplation, perhaps
- the only act in which we allow
- ourselves to merge with the
- consciousness of another
- human being. We possess the
- books we read, but they
- possess us also, filling us with
- thoughts and observations,
- asking us to make them part
- of ourselves. This is what
- Conroy was hinting, the way
- books enlarge us by giving
- direct access to experiences
- not our own. In order for
- this to work, however, we
- need a certain type of
- silence, an ability to filter
- out the noise.
- Such a state is increasingly
- elusive in our over-networked
- culture, in which every rumor
- and mundanity is blogged
- and tweeted. Today, it seems
- it is not contemplation we seek
- but an odd sort of distraction
- masquerading as being in the
- know. Why? Because of the
- illusion that illumination is
- based on speed, that it is more
- important to react than to
- think, that we live in a culture
- in which something is attached
- to every bit of time.
- I am too susceptible, it turns
- out, to the tumult of the culture,
- the sound and fury signifying
- nothing. For many years, I
- have read primarily at night.
- These days, however, after
- spending hours reading
- e-mails and fielding phone
- calls in the office, tracking
- stories across countless
- websites, I find it difficult to
- quiet down. I pick up a book
- and read a paragraph; then
- my mind wanders and I drift
- onto the Internet, pace the
- house before returning to the
- page. Or I want to do these
- things but don’t. I force myself
- to follow whatever I’m reading
- until the inevitable moment I
- give myself over to the flow.
- What I’m struggling with is
- the sense that there is
- something out there that
- merits my attention, when in
- fact it’s mostly just a series
- of disconnected riffs that
- add up to the anxiety of the
- age.
- Yet there is time, if we want
- it. Contemplation is not
- only possible but necessary,
- especially in light of all the
- overload. This is where real
- reading comes in—because
- it demands that space,
- because by drawing us back
- from the present, it restores
- time to us in a fundamental
- way. There is the fixity of
- the text, which doesn’t
- change whether written
- yesterday or a thousand
- years ago. St. Augustine
- composed his “Confessions”
- in AD 397, but when he
- details his attempts to find
- meaning in the face of
- transient existence, the
- immediacy of his longing
- obliterates the temporal
- divide.
- When I was a kid, maybe
- 12 or 13, my grandmother
- used to get mad at me for
- attending family functions
- with a book. Back then, if I’d
- had the language for it, I
- might have argued that the
- world within the pages was
- more compelling than the
- world without; I was reading
- both to escape and to be
- engaged. All these years later,
- I find myself in a not-
- dissimilar position, in which
- reading has become an act of
- meditation, with all of
- meditation’s attendant
- difficulty and grace. I sit
- down. I try to make a place
- for silence. It’s harder than it
- used to be, but still, I read.