“I don’t read”
Gabriela de Mendonça Gomes
— an absolutely terrifying sentence I’ve heard far too many times over the past six years.
I understand if maybe you:
don’t read much
haven’t gotten a chance to read as much as you like
don’t like to read certain things
But the respect I have for someone drops untold levels when they tell me they simply don’t read. It’s not a matter of simply having other hobbies. In addition to reading, I crochet, I knit, I write, I make bullet journals. And it’s not a matter of not having time. You don’t have to read every day, or even read abundantly—though in this case, I do believe more is better. But to identify yourself as someone who does not engage in the act of reading—and the fact that so many people are choosing the unlit path of selfishness and ignorance (because that’s what it is, when you are not engaging with texts, you are choosing to never live in anyone’s world but your own, never investigating anyone else’s perspectives against your own)—is… so sad.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one” – George R.R Martin
I feel like Diogenes, going around with his lantern seeking one good/honest man, except it’s just that I’m looking for someone who can pick up a non-screened thing and stay attuned to it for more than five minutes. Or who can watch a movie—who can, for some two hours, do just one thing, pay attention to one thing—without being on their phone. I’m guilty of that, I admit.
And I am not an acetic. I spend weekends binge watching stupid shows, not reading; I sometimes scroll for too long on Pinterest and feel the muscle memory developing to automatically open it when I feel a shred of boredom or lack of stimulation. But when that happens, I can feel it, and I stop, and I read.
"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." – Groucho Marx
In our first newsletter, I analyzed the covalence between our concepts of time and money. Paying attention to something also contains this metaphor. You pay only for things which you believe have value, attention is therefore only given to things you deem worthwhile. And what you spend time with changes what you’re like, just like when you spend time with certain friends versus others and how they impact you. So, if your time is devoted to social media— quick and easy consumption without profound interaction— the doubt arises: why would you spend time with your friend who likes to do things slow slowly and quietly? What’s the point?
"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers." – Charles William Eliot
I think the point is that, as poet Fernando Pessoa puts it, we are “eternal tourists of ourselves, there is no landscape but what we are. We possess nothing, for we don’t even possess ourselves.” This state of perpetual existential tourism means that we cannot establish permanent, insular homes within ourselves. And British mycologist Merlin Sheldrake encapsulates the problem well; “it’s not always easy to be comfortable in the space created by open questions. Agoraphobia can set in. It’s tempting to hide in small rooms built by quick answers.”
His idea brings us to a related issue: if we want to better embrace our existential tourism, we also need to consider the type of reading that we do. Because nowadays, in fact, we are reading all day—text messages, social media post captions, memes—but we are not reading books, a narrative between two roughly textured or glossy covers. And if what we’re isn’t eye-opening or only agrees with what we think then, we won’t really benefit from reading it. That is, you don’t just have to read, you have to read the right things. Because, as Alexander Humboldt knew, different ways of seeing require different ways of articulating the seen.
“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” – George R. R. Martin
This claim of ‘the right things’ could seem oppressively normative and there’s no doubt that I’m being prescriptive here but what comprises “right” is incredibly broad. In my mind, it spans many genres and writers. More than specific texts or writers, we have to read widely, not just easy “beach reads” or smut or fantasy or nonfiction, but a mixture of it. We need to give ourselves the opportunity to inhabit different minds and worlds. We need books. Lots of them. We need books strewn through houses, in our bags, on our minds.
“ If you go home with someone and they don't have books, don't fuck ‘em!” - John Waters
Professor Justin Clark wrote at one point about the worthwhile burdens that are, despite of, or indeed due to their requirement of effort, work we should not avoid, but embrace, because they sharpen certain skills as we do them and leave us with the satisfaction of a job well done. That sense of completion, of finality and closure, is directly opposite of the experience of scrolling, which can be literally endless. It appeals to our reptile brain, as my high school physics teacher called it. But we are more than that. And although with books we are also consuming media, the creative and analytical parts of our mind are engage;, we are doing mental work. And it is work that is worthwhile, an activity we should strive for, be proud of enacting, and encourage everyone we can to do it, too.
I urge you to actively immerse yourself in a grammar of animacy, of life, of literature, to let yourself merely exist in structures of stagnation.
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us” – Franz Kafka