Deep Reading

Social media has taken the place of many a newspaper during early morning routines, paired with a flaky pastry and takeaway cup filled with cream and hot coffee. And it is that medium through which numerous articles on life and love, relationships and relativity come to play.

Which would you choose?

A recent reposting of an article in Elite Daily entitled "Why Readers, Scientifically, Are the Best People to Fall in Love With" piqued my interest the other day. Not so much for the romantic sentiments of being able to truly understand your feelings or the association with possessing the knowledge and experiences of 1000 souls (which really is quite creepy in truth...), but the idea of deep reading.

Coined by American writer Sven Birkerts in his compilation The Gutenberg Elegies (1994), he claims

"Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity."

Birkirts continues

"The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence we crawl through, returning, once we have wandered, to the very place we started. Deep listening to words is rarely an option. Our ear, and with it our whole imaginative apparatus, marches in lockstep to the speaker's baton."

The idea of deep reading is a foreign concept to many, as claimed by the above article. Can it be said that the ideas put forth are a proper representation of the culture and ideals of the age? That the entire website, both contributors and readers, are a reflection of the Millenial generation? That as a group, we have become so entangled in technology that words of ink and pressed pulp are no longer commonplace?

I hope not. For otherwise, my existence and those of many friends will be among the minority. A dying breed.

Birkerts argues against the technological tentacles grasping at our lives, claiming that reading through a device is not the same as holding spine of a book beneath your fingers and he is right. There is nothing like the smell of a book, the feeling of the cover caressed by your fingers and the rigidity of a perfect spine, still yet uncracked, pages unopened. And yet, the idea of deep reading, I contend, cannot be disregarded merely because of its electronic replacement, whether a reading device such as a Nook or an application like the Kindle.

However, Birkerts rightly believes that

"When we read with our eyes, we hear the words in the theater of our auditory inwardness. The voice we conjure up is our own–it is the sound-print of the self. Bringing this voice to life via the book is one of the subtler aspects of the reading magic, but hearing a book in the voice of another amounts to a silencing of that self–it is an act of vocal tyranny. The listener is powerless against the taped voice... The collaborative component is gone; one simply receives"

The popular concept of bringing books to life through the movie screen has long irked me. How can 600 pages of prose be condensed into 90 minutes of screen time? Or even 180 minutes as with more recent adaptations of classics? Instead of skimming or using Cliffnotes, students zero in on film adaptations, occasionally not realizing the errors in translation. While I cannot say I am a proponent of the former, the idea of reading a simplified version is far superior when the objective is to form a literary basis. Now, it is not to say that an actor has not performed well, but in deference to the original authors, we must separate ourselves from the text, appreciate both forms of diversion for their own merits.

Yet, I digress. For this was to be on the immersion of the self into a book, not a social commentary. And so I pose the same questions.

When was the last time you read a book cover to cover without skimming?

When was the last time you sat down without music or a movie to the silence of rustling pages or the tapping of a button?

Have you ever felt the cool drip of tears down your face unexpectedly? Or startled yourself with a shout of laughter?

For me, it was only last night when I felt the pain of deep reading. The heartbreak of giving myself to a world the author created, investing myself in the characters and their desires. The feeling of losing all I held dear because of one harsh word. And the disappointment mirrored in their eyes. I do not speak of pain in the literal sense, of the sharp stabbing sensation of being impaled or the crushing substernal pressure of a myocardial infarct. No. This was the pain of loving too deeply, of reading so hard that reality slipped away and nothing existed but for the world I dreamt of.

Is this the reasoning behind why readers make the best people to fall in love with? Or is it the other way round? That in losing ourselves to worlds which only exist in writing, we learn to love so unconditionally, giving away bits of ourselves without consciously thinking of the repercussions. The salient points of the article show what the reader can bring to the relationship, but what of their other half? What is it they offer to one who loves so deeply, cares without thought and brings wisdom to light? Seems a bit one sided, no?

And therein lies the truth. From the hands of Poe, "for all that we see or seem... is but a dream within a dream."