We may think of reading as our solitary immersement in a single book, but that’s not really what happens. We read while we are doing other things – our eye tracking through Spare by Prince Harry or Marcel Proust’s Finding Time Again (taste vary), but our mind all the time turning over the sound of traffic outside, the turning hum of the dishwasher in the kitchen, the list of things you haven’t yet done, the thing your friend said yesterday. And while we might imagine ‘good’ reading as the silencing of these other voices, in reality reading is always about the entangling of the book in front of us with all the other things going on in our head. Reading is always about many texts at the same time; reading is always plural and, in that sense, necessarily unfocused and dispersed.
I always imagined the wheel's responding to an overenthusiastic downward pull, dismounting, crushing the reader and awaiting a Gorey-esque or "Far Side" bookmark!
Excellent reflections on the real nature of reading, Adam, thanks. It is a reality that has rarely been acknowledged in academic circles that reading (and reading for *pleasure*) is the sole justification for the study of "literature"; anything else amounts to counting angels on a printed full stop.
I always imagined the wheel's responding to an overenthusiastic downward pull, dismounting, crushing the reader and awaiting a Gorey-esque or "Far Side" bookmark!
Really enjoyed this post! Thank you!
Excellent reflections on the real nature of reading, Adam, thanks. It is a reality that has rarely been acknowledged in academic circles that reading (and reading for *pleasure*) is the sole justification for the study of "literature"; anything else amounts to counting angels on a printed full stop.
Best wishes for 2024!
Mike