Why reading matters

Photo by Richard Howard.

Back in 1991, I took a graduate course from Sven Birkerts, a charming and stubborn intellectual. Again and again, he came back to his misgivings over the flood of information that was coming our way and his fear that writing on computers (rather than by hand or with a typewriter) did not allow for deep thinking. Let's just say that his ruminations on the topic didn't do much for the self-confidence of all aspiring writers in the room.

The book that he was working on at the time was the praised and denounced The Gutenberg Elegies. Now, in this School Library Journal cover article, Birkerts argues, simply, for the act of reading. Instead of assuming that reading is good, he analyzes why it's a worthwhile practice.

While much has been written about the constant distractions of our digital world, Birkerts gets to the very root of why reading matters in this paragraph:

"Does it matter? What use is the imagination—as opposed to, say, the kind of mental agility, the quick-reflex thinking, that video games encourage? What is the argument we make for reading and daydreaming and cultivating inner resonances? I would say, to put it in the simplest terms, that imagination nourishes the primary self. As much as our skills and practical accomplishments bolster a sense of independent identity, imagination fills out the inner counterpart. It consolidates the “I” by making plausible the other. Imagination enables empathy, and imagination exercised through reading, through the work of inhabiting the language and sensibility of created characters—and of course the author herself—pushes continually against the solipsism fed to us by a marketing industry selling consumption as the index of our worth."

Slow type

And now I run the risk of seeming ridiculously retro and nostalgic, but I loved the story in the New York Times style section today about typewriter fetishists.

“I’m in love with all of them,” said Louis Smith, 28, a lanky drummer from Williamsburg. Five minutes later, he had bought a dark blue 1968 Smith Corona Galaxie II for $150. “It’s about permanence, not being able to hit delete,” he explained. “You have to have some conviction in your thoughts. And that’s my whole philosophy of typewriters.”

The article, "Click, Clack, Ding!, Sigh"...brought up a lot of buried misapprehension that I've always had about the slapdash approach to writing that the computer has created in all of us. And because this  is not just about the love of slow-brewed thoughts, but about the sad fact that we've embraced plastic over lovingly burnished metal, here's the slide show companion to the story.

In grad school, I was taking a class with Sven Birkerts when he was writing The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. In the class, he often threw out his theory about computers creating a lot of bad thinking and dashed-off writing (see Louis Smith, above). I'd even take it a step further to say that handwriting creates the best link between the brain and the hand, offering up more creativity and solid thinking. I remember casually asking a writer/editor if she ever tried writing in longhand first, because I always thought it brought better results. "Just sounds like a waste of time to me," she said with a flummoxed look, making me feel like a complete throwback...kind of like these typewriters.

Kid, don't listen to that bottom-heavy bear

Finally getting to day two of the Los Angeles Times Festival of books -- by five o'clock on Sunday, both my son and I had come down with a wicked virus picked up somewhere between the booths and the food court.

As the virus was beginning to tickle my throat, and I was probably getting a little grumpy anyway, I was driven to distraction by a huge fuzzy bear dressed like Flavor Flav.

Hip Hop Harry closed out the day -- he's a body in a huge bear costume (he's also the star of a tv show on Discovery Kids) vaulting around to the delicious sounds of Kurtis Blow.  Not only did Harry underscore that old school hip-hop whomps the newer stuff, he also emphasized our wrong-headed approach to getting kids to read.

Harry rapped about the importance of washing hands, brushing teeth, and cooperating. All fine, but damn him for what he did next. With my impressionable three-year-old in the audience, he followed those "good for you" messages with a riff on books, reading and libraries called "I Love to Learn." I should've covered my kid's ears.

Sven Birkerts, a former teacher of mine and the writer of a few seriously contentious books (especially The Gutenberg Elegies, which he wrote while I was in his class -- not a compliment!), has written about his problem with prescriptive reading, and I have to agree.

I learned about the power of the written word when I was in sixth grade, when I giggled over the Judy Blume book Forever with a classmate at recess one day. The next day, I was called for a very serious conference with the teacher. Seems that my classmate, who had just arrived from Egypt, told her dad about the book and that was that. The book was officially banned from the school.

Now, I'd never had any restrictions on my reading (and I'd never, ever been in trouble at school before). Did I learn that books were powerful? Did I learn that some books were considered "bad for you"? Oh, yes. Did I hate reading for it? Heck no!

Also, because of my hideous illness, I have had the time to read many of the Atlantic Monthly's entire 2010 fiction supplement. My favorite story was a bizarre and wonderful slice of fiction called "Bone Hinge" by Katie Williams about a pair of Siamese twins. Was this story good for me? Probably not, because it was both creepy and sad. But it was worth reading -- it took me somewhere.

So what do we need to teach kids about reading and books (and libraries)? That reading can be dangerous because it can break you out of yourself, that it can take you to a new place, that it can be disturbing and sad but still glorious because it can rock your world. No, Harry, reading is not good for me. It's not even "good." And that's the best thing about it.