|
|
|||
|
Read More Books The fuss people are making over Everyone-In-the-City-Reads-the-Same-Book projects (I’m sure they have more graceful titles), like the disagreements over the literary canon years ago, is another manifestation of the question of What You Should Read. I have some thoughts about this: First off, there are readers and nonreaders, and as I’ll get to later, I think whether you’re one or the other (or somewhere in between) is determined in childhood, if not before. Readers don’t have to be told what to read (on the contrary, they more likely have to be told to stop reading, such as at the dinner table, in bed, or at parties that they are hosting). Nonreaders are not going to like being told what to read no matter what it is, because they have to choke books down like castor oil. They are the people who buy summaries of their book club books so they don’t have to read them. Nonreaders sometimes attribute to readers superior qualities such as intelligence, sensitivity or worldliness (which is why they joined the book club in the first place). I like to flatter myself by thinking there is some truth to this, but there isn’t. You can be a great thinker without being a great reader, and vice versa. Reading does not make you a better human being. Reading is a good habit, better than most, but it’s just a habit. It bears more than a passing resemblance to other, more harmful addictions, in the escapism it provides and the way it can interfere with sleeping patterns, physical health (notably eyesight and muscle tone), and personal relationships. It should be encouraged, but at times it should be kept in check. In the disagreements over what everyone should be reading, all parties agree that reading is a good thing. In some cases, this is because they are not readers. Of course, there are lots of good things we should encourage in public life, reading just happens to be cheap. It would be at least as beneficial, but a lot costlier (and noisier) to train an entire city to improve their speaking skills. All that aside, there are very different points of view about how to encourage people to do more of this good thing called reading. On the one hand, some say, programs like these get people thinking about books of any kind. How could more people reading be a bad thing, regardless of whether it’s Gogol or Goosebumps? But there are different kinds of reading. A voracious romance reader isn’t going to tuck into Godel, Escher, Bach just because she loves to read. Someone who reads book after book about race might not pick up The Bell Curve, and not having read it might not keep her from criticizing it. A habitual mystery reader may never pick up a newspaper, another reader may read only non-fiction. Most readers read for pleasure, and one of the greatest pleasures is being agreed with. One of the other great pleasures is reading something you virulently and self-righteously disagree with. People read what they know as much as writers write what they know; it could be called a matter of taste, or it could be called closed-mindedness. But even if being able to decipher the alphabet doesn’t lead in a direct line to devouring the classics, does it matter? What harm is done if Oprah’s viewers consume book after book about unwed teenage mothers? Without Oprah, would they be tackling the Aeneid, and are our nation’s graduate literature programs languishing as a result? As I said above, being a reader doesn’t make you smarter or better than other people, and neither does reading Arthur Schlesinger as opposed to Laura Schlessinger. You can’t tell people what to enjoy reading any more than you can tell people what to think. But can you get more of them to read? And should you? Encouraging adults to read and encouraging children to read are two very different things that I’d like to separate. Encouraging children to read is more important, because the reading habit is formed in childhood (based on a scientific study by and of myself). As I’ve said, a reading habit can be problematic, but it’s basically a good thing, and better than movies or video games or god knows what else kids today are doing. Some argue that being told what to read takes the fun out of it. (I hear this proclamation about human nature made frequently – that people naturally resist doing what they’re told is good for them. Even as a child, however, I thought being "good for me" sounded, well, like a good thing. Is everyone else really so self-destructive? I guess that explains the mystery of smoking). Anyway, we’re told that being told to read will make kids swear off it for life. But the combination of large blocks of unstructured time and the public library being open doesn’t seem to be doing the trick of turning kids on to the joys of books. The public library has videos to borrow and computer games on tap. In this climate, actually talking to children about books doesn’t seem like the biggest threat to their reading. Libraries and schools also have summer reading programs, which are supposed to be about rewarding children for reading whatever they want. Having worked on summer reading programs, I think they make reading seem about as much fun as taking out the recycling – the goal is to fill up a bag and get it out of the kitchen. The kids read so they can check off their blocks and win a prize, with no sense of the intrinsic value of the activity. What’s more, where I worked, I was dismayed to learn that listening to books on tape qualified as reading. We’re told that kids should be read to from birth and grow up seeing their parents and teachers reading, and in this way reading will become a natural and necessary part of life. I think this is a good way to raise children, but it won’t necessarily result in a nation of bookworms. Basic literacy, of course, should be any society’s goal. But not everyone is suited for the solitary habit that reading is. As for telling adults what to read, it’s already too late to develop the habit, so these programs aren’t much more than an exercise in civic boosterism. Why do people object to them? Last time I checked, you weren’t required to have read To Kill a Mockingbird in order to register to vote in Chicago (not that voting is a big incentive in America – maybe buying gas would be). Bickering arose in New York because the choice of book was viewed as "representing" a city. Do you really think that if someone says they’re from New York City, a stranger’s response will be "Hey, you must have read The Color of Water!" Should more people be reading than are? I think being a reader is great, but if I were a ballerina I would probably advocate for all children being sent to dance school as soon as they could walk. I will say that readers have the advantage of being able to withstand the pressure of all their neighbors reading Barbara Kingsolver without feeling like they’re missing anything. The other nice thing about being a reader is these everybody-read-the-same-book programs don’t make me feel instantly guilty (which I suspect is the source of some of the objections to them). There are several things that I’m always wishing I could incorporate into my life, like getting up early or having better posture, but reading isn’t one of them. |
|||
|
