Christopher Laurence Examines – Y U NO Read?

Christopher Laurence Examines – Y U NO Read?

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.” -Ezra Pound

  What is the difference between watching a movie or binge watching a series, and reading a book? No, really: what differentiates them? Both engage the eyes and the mind. Both require a time commitment. Both are forms of recreation, at least when we speak of narrative texts, not scholarly ones or school textbooks. So what is it that some people (many people, I believe) find so repellent about sitting down and cracking open a book? Is it because a book needs to be held while you can just plop the remote down and free your hands to hold that triple cheeseburger? I don’t think that’s it. Is it the use of the imagination which reading requires, a type of effort on the reader’s part? Maybe we have something there. Is it that, unlike a TV show or movie, books can take many hours, whole afternoons, entire days and weeks, to read? Very possibly. I acknowledge and understand that a book is a commitment. Many of them will rope you in with an enticing first paragraph, first page, first chapter, and then, before you know it, you find yourself mired in the most trite, boring and cliche of narratives; sinking in verbal quicksand. And by that point what should you do? Your options are limited to either scrapping the book – and eating the fact that you wasted any number of hours on it up to that point – or continuing with the read – thereby committing to many more hours devoted to the title – in the hopes that the quality will increase and the story once again become engaging. The whole thing can really put someone off this reading business. Believe me, I understand. I have been deceived by many a dazzling opening sentence.

“The Madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through.”

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”

“For a long time I would go to bed early. Sometimes, the candle barely out, my eyes closed so quickly that I did not have time to tell myself: “I’m falling asleep.”

“The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking over the footlights of an empty auditorium.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

“In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.”

  Did any of these works bear out the promise made in their opening line? I think you should endeavor to find out (some of them, of course, are dead giveaways). That is, after all, a great part of the point of this essay. William Faulkner famously advised writers to “Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.” And while I disagree with Willie here, if one takes his words mostly literally, in advising that we throw all discernment and temperance out the window when it comes to literature, I do understand his larger point.

  I will confess that my intellect has lately been dimmed. And it seems to me it has been dimmed not insignificantly, and that the personal lexicon which I can draw from at will has also shrunken. This has been of my own doing. I have found myself in a sort of personal, self-imposed orality. What was the cause? Among other things it has largely been the diminution of my reading habits. Much of my life has been marked by phases, a mark of transitioning and maturing that I largely never grew out of. In my teens there was a punk rock phase, then a music nerd phase, then an art-house film buff phase, then a criminal phase (perhaps we’ll speak more of this in the future) and so on. And within these larger phases were collected smaller phases – or a shifting of preferences– for different hobbies I would devote my time to. These smaller phases still occur, and it has been the prolonged phase out of steady reading over the past few years that has caused a decline of the intellect which I recognize even myself. The exact right word for the meaning of the thought I’m entertaining is frequently just out of reach. I am no longer nipping at the heels of William F. Buckley to amass an obscure and esoteric collection of vocabulary with which to befuddle, confound and impress those I engage in dialogue. Luckily, thankfully, this can be remedied, and all it takes is to once again begin picking up those collections of bound pages and making use of my eyes, mind and imagination in a way which will enrich my intellect, and – dare I say – my spirit. And God willing, somewhere along the way – I hope frequently –I shall also be entertained.

  I ask you to join me in this. Books demand time. Books require imagination. Books are expensive, movies are shorter, TV series are more sensational, video games are (arguably) more engaging. Yet all the same, none of them offer the benefits, the rewards, the sense of accomplishment that books do. None of them, not even the best of films, will stick with you through years and years and perhaps your whole life, when one day you recall a phrase from a favorite novel you hadn’t thought of since your youth, and it will perfectly express the sentiment you are feeling in that moment, and you’ll smile. Don’t rob yourself of these chances. Go to the shelf in the living room, the book shop, the library, make one selection, and give it your time.

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