In home movies my uncle took of family gatherings during the 1950s, one child is, more often than not, caught off in the corner, reading a book. That child was me. The first thing I did upon entering someone's house was to look for the books, and then start going through those that intrigued me. Thinking about that child now, I feel mixed emotions. I could not have acted otherwise, since most social occasions at the time sent me into the throes of a boredom that bordered on the depressive. If I couldn't read, I was close to agony. I did not care about other children's laughing or pointing, but I did not forget it.
Thus throughout my life I have always felt slightly guilty about reading. Reading (like writing) is a solitary activity (except when you're reading aloud to someone else, an activity that unfortunately has fallen into disrepute, unless the listener is a child). Thus when I am reading, I am not engaging myself with the world (even though such times are when I can feel most alive, aware); I am not living life, experiencing it. I consequently feel more guilty when I read for "pleasure"--even though, happily enough lately, some of those pleasure-giving authors have turned into essay subjects and nice little paychecks.
Another, less obvious reason to read is as an anodyne for pain, usually mental or emotional. Reading makes you think about something else, gets your mind off the wound you constantly keep gnawing at, lets time do its healing. During one period of depression, I could only read essays by Joseph Epstein. His lucid and sane voice accompanied me, even got me through a painful valley.
All that reading, though, paid off in that now I can read and teach pretty much what I want--within the bounds of academic integrity. Of course, it also means that i have to teach writing as well, and as I tell my writing students, for me, introductions are much, much easier to invent than conclusions--as is the case here.
I'm going to go read.
5 comments:
Read on, my good man. Just like education, a good read is never wasted.
I was the "reading child" as well, and had to be taught that it was impolite to read at the table, and dangerous to read while walking to school.
Maybe you felt the same way that I did: reading was an escape from social interactions, which were usually boring and awkward. I felt the same way about music.
Fortunately, "reading a book" is no longer considered to be anti-social...it has very positive social connotations now that fewer people read the old fashioned way. But I think you're right that it still is not a social thing to do. I guess that's why people have book clubs.
No matter what, reading is a way of collecting information...if you can use that information in every day life then it's all worth while...it's "research." And if it helps you through the roughness...even better!
Personally, though, I can't read when I'm really depressed. I can't keep my mind on it.
After thinking about this a little more, I realize that some of my feelings are engendered by comparing myself to my father, who could do almost anything with his hands, including building an addition to our house which became my bedroom. Going the intellectual route was one way not to compete with him, but still the working class/middle class culture I grew up in after WWII did not see reading as being very "masculine."
And along with you, Muffy, in my worst depressive periods, my anhedonia spreads into reading, too, as well as completely cauterizing my love of music--the aspect of depression I hate above all. I was able to read during that particular depressive bout because I had to function at some level.
All of this is ironic, because I'm the person at my institution who constantly argues for the liberal arts--that we don't go down the "vo-tech" road. I tell my students that the lit courses I teach are to be taken because they represent the kind of activities that free citizens do in a free state.
I guess in the end I hate anyone who tries to stifle the kind of curiosity that leads a child to open a book on animals in Africa or the planets in the Solar system or prehistoric mammals, because even if the stifling doesn't take hold, it still echoes somewhere down the years. And for that curiosity our culture substitutes an appetite for worthless, trashy pap.
But boy, was it fun to walk down a street and read a book at the same time!
In grade six I would walk to school wearing these big winter boots. The boots were fastened with clamshell hooks that stuck out a bit from the fabric.
My parents used to tell me that if I continued to read while walking to school, eventually I'd walk into something or fall into the river. Not to mention it was anti-social.
One day I was reading and walking to school when the hooks on my boots tangled up and I fell, immediately and helplessly, among the other kids. A few days later it happened again.
So I stopped reading on the way to school.
I think the last time I walked and read was in first-year high school. I remember reading "A Canticle for Leibowitz" on a gloomy Sunday afternoon in a park a good four miles from our house, and the only way I could have gotten there was by walking.
By then I was doing enough bus and elevated train riding to go to school to get a lot of reading (and homework) done. It was on an el train going to Loyola University that I remember reading "The Sot-Weed Factor." Other riders must have thought I was a giggling idiot.
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