3/2/2010 2:00:00 PM This column's a real page turner From the Bluff
Is anyone else having trouble reading books? I have been struggling with it for five years. Ever since finishing graduate school my ease of reading really took a dive. I am pretty sure I acquired a form of PTSD back then after reading Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. But whatever is going on, until now I have been in denial.
Who wants to face the shame and grief of losing the ability to read long forms of fiction and non-fiction? For the past few years I have been telling myself things like, "You'll pick it up again soon," or, "It's just a phase, like that phase you went through when you thought you were gay." And just beneath my cloak of denial lies horror: What happened? Why can't I concentrate? I'll become vapid and nobody will like me anymore!
You know how they say that when a dog sniffs a fire hydrant or post that he is 'reading' information? My dogs now read more than I do.
Have my neurons so changed their positions to accommodate technology that they can no longer tolerate a slow cooking, analog narrative? There is a prescription drug that helps folks overcome stage fright -- might one be invented that will help a middle aged gal like me read? I hope they call it Literaturex.
My sister, Sally, modeled a love of reading for me since our parents mostly read newspapers and magazines. Seventeen years my senior, she babysat me when I was in grade school. Over at her and her then husband's rental house, she'd pull out tomes from a homemade brick-and-plank bookcase. To me they seemed like precious gems. Because my sister belonged to the Book-of-the-Month Club, I read hardcover copies of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," Irskine Caldwell's "God's Little Acre" and Paul Galico's "The Snow Goose" among others.
I fondly recall, as a pre-teen, sitting up all night in order to finish reading "Gone with the Wind." I bawled all alone in the living room, not wanting it to end. And during part of my 20s I would, each Sunday, sit and read an entire book. In those days I could focus - I was absorbed and could concentrate. Back then I didn't fall asleep after reading for 10 minutes! It was miraculous.
In my early 30s I read James Joyce's "Ulysses" (along with the accompanying guide "James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study" by Stuart Gilbert). It took an entire year to read and I was so proud. At the time I was working as a cook at a lunch counter in Magnolia Village. I created a T-shirt that read "I am on page ___ of Ulysses." I wore this to work and in the blank spot would pin a piece of paper upon which I had written the page number I was currently on. I can only imagine how long it would take for me to finish that novel at the rate I read now. Can you say 'nursing home'?
I thank God I read voraciously when I was young because that may never happen again.
My sister still reads constantly. And guess what? She has no computer and doesn't use the Internet. Is that a coincidence?
Perhaps I can blame my reading troubles on our culture. In an August, 2009 essay in the Los Angeles Times entitled "The Lost Art of Reading," book editor David L. Ulin wrote, "We live in time; we understand ourselves in relation to it, but in our culture, time collapses into an ever-present now. How do we pause when we must know everything instantly? How do we ruminate when we are constantly expected to respond? How do we immerse in something (an idea, an emotion, a decision) when we are no longer willing to give ourselves the space to reflect?"
The only thing I know for sure is that suffering from non lectio is rough on the ego. I have always wanted to be a person folks described as "...always having her head in a book. She must be so smart!" But I don't have my head in a book; I have my head in a hand-held, Free Cell Solitaire battery powered game. How humiliating!
I have been trying to read "Moby Dick" for a year. An interesting phenomenon is that when reading it at home I can barely sit still. Yet, when I took it one weekend to Bellingham, to a friend's cabin where not much was going on, it became as easy and enjoyable to read as, say, a book by comedian Sandra Tsing Loh.
How relived I was to know that reading, for me, is still possible!
I guess that's one solution, to get out of town - to go to a place where I may once again curl up in a chair and enter another world. A place where I can fulfill a longing to connect with the mind of a writer and learn, from both fiction and non-fiction, everything I will ever need to know.
