Why Read?

As can be seen from the category, this is another of those books you really should read.....if you read. If you're part of the growing hordes of non-readers, you can quit reading this post now. The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts is a volume that may occasionally be tiresome, but it's point is one I've read in no other dedicated book: what is happening to us as a civilization because of the tectonic move away from reading caused by the various technologies and media of "the information age?"

For me, this book has nothing to do with:

1) reading to attain "literacy."

2) reading to peruse the newspaper or magazines; these media are in the same status as the dinosaurs a few seconds after the asteroid hit, and reading for information has nothing to do with the point being made.

3) reading to get some job, pass a test to get a grade, and all that dreary crap.

What really grabbed me about Birkerts' book is something else again: reading as escape. Reading to get away from.....this. (From YOU, too!) Just me and the words of Dickens, or Hemingway, or Heinlein, or Miller, or......and if you don't understand what I'm talking about yet, here's another invitation to stop reading. Chances are if you don't get this, you never will.

By way of digression, unlike a lot of people, I don't believe reading is for everyone. First, about a third of the human race doesn't read, and will never be able to read, or not very well; I suppose that's what's meant by "functional illiteracy." Doesn't matter, it's built-in. Reading and writing are an altogether different proposition, categorically different from speaking and hearing. Any normally functioning human being will learn to speak and listen to their language, without the slightest effort, just by "hanging out," by the time they are 2 or so. Reading and writing are handled in different parts of the brain, and a significant fraction of the human race can no more learn to read or write than most can do differential equations. This is -yet another- thing that is not admitted by the educational establishment, although it's documented beyond all question.

To return to the main point, and Birkerts', what will become of us when we can no longer "get away" for a while? Is that "reading place" where a lot of the world's creativity is brewed? I don't know, and don't rate the concept that highly anyway. Is it just one of the last really private places, in a world more crowded and packed each day? Although I consciously live as far away as I can from most humans, and particularly their noxious collectivities, I value it terribly. I can't escape my conviction that whatever the consequences, if and when the world of the reader disappears, something great and fundamental in us will be lost, and our humanity will be something other than we have known.