Was just talking about this with someone-- at the end of the day I don't care how someone spends their time, whether it's reading Joyce or watching superhero movies or whatever. You only get one life and people should spend it doing what makes them happy and fulfilled. But at the same time when I see Louis Menand or Stephen Greenblatt or whoever saying that books are dead as a form and Succession or The White Lotus or whatever are just as good as Hamlet and Mrs. Dalloway it's like I'm sorry, man, get real. You don't believe that and I don't believe that and you're honestly in dereliction of your duties as a pubic intellectual to say that you do.
the only thing that actually “worked” for me as I tried to adapt to a changed life after becoming a mother ar midlife was reading physical books again…when my child was young and on/around my body so much it interfered with holding books….now that she’s older and more living in her own frontier and I can hold and read physical
books for longer stretches of time I feel like I’ve come back into my body, back into the world. And yes absolutely right now reading books is a rebellious act, so too buying books from smaller purveyors and supporting authors this administration would like to erase from public space
To your hypothetical suggestion, "I could reply like the Romantic I am, expounding on the wondrous alchemy of human consciousness represented in language", I say please do! I'd love to read your account of this alchemy. I was rather startled to read Henry Oliver, in the debate on AI in your other publication, dumbfounded by the idea that writing allows access to the writer's soul. We could do with a few more people of your talent standing up for such un-utilitarian ideals.
I think AI can write for you more than read for you, but even if it does so "well" what is the point? Chess is a good analogy. Deep Blue beat Kasparov in the 1990s but human beings still try to excel at chess today and chess tournaments have many policies in place to police against the use of computer help. Tech can certainly be of assistance to the reader or writer, but why do humans need AI help to write a book or read a literary passage? When, exactly, did human struggle to write novels or literary criticism? Never, of course.
Well said. There's a fascinating divide between the kinds of things we reserve for humans and those we willingly outsource to the machine. If AI developed a cure for cancer tomorrow, none of us would say, "Cool, but I'll wait for a human to come up with something." Against that example of pure pragmatism we have the intuition you point to, that there are realms of life that should be preserved for humanity. I fear that the tech bros and accelerationists value only one side of that coin. Thank you for going to bat for the other side, for what I rather untrendily think of as sacred.
"Reading a book can, at times, be a difficult activity. It is harder than watching a show or listening to music" - this is an important point. If you stop listening to the music, the music goes on anyway; but if you stop reading the book, the book stops too. Reading requires a priori an effort of will and engagement that other art forms usually don't.
My favorite part of reading is that it’s both passive and active at the same time. You engage your mind, focus and imagination in a unique way, and you can be lying in bed for hours at a time while you do it. The best of both worlds.
A lovely read, even if I read it on a screen! The Book of Paper I am reading today is George R. Stewart’s novel, Storm, an “eco-novel,” in which the main character is indeed a storm, moving implacably from birth to death in twelve days. The humans scurrying below are the minor, unnamed chapters (though their fates engage us). Difficult to put down, taking rests from it to work on my own writing projects, happy for that back-and-forth.
By the way, I’m reading this book (an NYRB Press reprint) because of a beautifully-written review I read (on a screen) at 3 Quarks Daily. So, screen and paper are not necessarily so diametrically opposed . . .
Very thoughtful and timely. After querying literary agents and small publishing houses for the last 18 months and getting nowhere, I loved this line, "Our unimaginative, insular modern publishing conglomerates.
You are right about writing being good for the mind and soul. I think it's good for the culture too. Nowadays young people get their history online in little dibs and dabs, most of it twisted. But like you say in your piece, it's not just the young people who do not read, it's older folks as well. Yes, the phone is addictive. That's why for the past two years I've owned a flip phone. I use it strictly as a phone and on occasion I use the alarm. That's it. Yes, I have a computer, but it stays at home on the desk. I know people who only read on their phones, short things.
I have friends I grew up with. Wherever we went, we would look for a book store to browse in, often buying books.
Who is served by the trend of 'not reading books?' The corporate-state.
I never thought I would ever quote Al Gore, but here it is, "The 'well-informed citizenry is in danger of becoming the 'well-amused audience'.- Al Gore
I'm retired, living on a fixed income that doesn't leave me with the budget to buy books. I download pirated copies from wherever I can find them and read everything on a tablet screen. I even have Wordsworth's The Prelude and the best Shelley biography of all time in epub format on my handy little tab. I "majored" in the Romantics during my decade as a student in the 80s.
I am an amateur photographer, working with used equipment, all digital, because any incursion into the now-trendy "analog" world of film photography would simply be beyond my means. Plus, I just love the freedom digital equipment provides in abundance.
Even though we often hear that "the hipster" has passed into the dark of historical time (was it an "era" in the way that word is used now?), the hipster aesthetic was all about a kind of nostalgia for the pre-digital world, hence "vintage" this or that. And the preference for "analog" books over digital is in the same vein as the preference for film cameras over digital.
I suspect that the need for upper middle class boys and girls to maintain their superiority via accumulations of "cultural capital", ie hipsterism, has not so much gone away as morphed into what looks like "literary Substack" but smacks of high school cafeteria tables the way we've seen them in Hollywood teen flics for decades now.
When I compare this "world" to that of the English Romantics, I find it passing difficult to compare "social media influencers" with large fawning Substack followings to William Blake beavering away in obscurity or Shelley being chased by the original FBI/MI5. And while it is true that Byron may have been the original "rock star", he died fighting for Greek freedom, not trying to expand his reach on social media.
I’ve always been an avid reader of anything in print in front of me; now it seems all my reading is online articles such as yours (I’ve always been a news hound, too). It cuts into my book reading. Must make a change.
“The best way to win that concentration back—that firm and durable intelligence—is through the practice of reading books.” I don’t disagree, but there are many other ways to do this: through a faith practice, through a trade (the guys who tiled my shower had excellent concentration), through mastery of a musical instrument, even through folk arts like hunting, gathering, gardening, and cooking. I don’t think I have ever experienced more intense focus than while tracking an elk in Montana. There are many kinds of intelligence.
Was just talking about this with someone-- at the end of the day I don't care how someone spends their time, whether it's reading Joyce or watching superhero movies or whatever. You only get one life and people should spend it doing what makes them happy and fulfilled. But at the same time when I see Louis Menand or Stephen Greenblatt or whoever saying that books are dead as a form and Succession or The White Lotus or whatever are just as good as Hamlet and Mrs. Dalloway it's like I'm sorry, man, get real. You don't believe that and I don't believe that and you're honestly in dereliction of your duties as a pubic intellectual to say that you do.
the only thing that actually “worked” for me as I tried to adapt to a changed life after becoming a mother ar midlife was reading physical books again…when my child was young and on/around my body so much it interfered with holding books….now that she’s older and more living in her own frontier and I can hold and read physical
books for longer stretches of time I feel like I’ve come back into my body, back into the world. And yes absolutely right now reading books is a rebellious act, so too buying books from smaller purveyors and supporting authors this administration would like to erase from public space
To your hypothetical suggestion, "I could reply like the Romantic I am, expounding on the wondrous alchemy of human consciousness represented in language", I say please do! I'd love to read your account of this alchemy. I was rather startled to read Henry Oliver, in the debate on AI in your other publication, dumbfounded by the idea that writing allows access to the writer's soul. We could do with a few more people of your talent standing up for such un-utilitarian ideals.
I think AI can write for you more than read for you, but even if it does so "well" what is the point? Chess is a good analogy. Deep Blue beat Kasparov in the 1990s but human beings still try to excel at chess today and chess tournaments have many policies in place to police against the use of computer help. Tech can certainly be of assistance to the reader or writer, but why do humans need AI help to write a book or read a literary passage? When, exactly, did human struggle to write novels or literary criticism? Never, of course.
Well said. There's a fascinating divide between the kinds of things we reserve for humans and those we willingly outsource to the machine. If AI developed a cure for cancer tomorrow, none of us would say, "Cool, but I'll wait for a human to come up with something." Against that example of pure pragmatism we have the intuition you point to, that there are realms of life that should be preserved for humanity. I fear that the tech bros and accelerationists value only one side of that coin. Thank you for going to bat for the other side, for what I rather untrendily think of as sacred.
"Reading a book can, at times, be a difficult activity. It is harder than watching a show or listening to music" - this is an important point. If you stop listening to the music, the music goes on anyway; but if you stop reading the book, the book stops too. Reading requires a priori an effort of will and engagement that other art forms usually don't.
Also why audiobooks aren’t ‘reading’, though many people claim they are…
My favorite part of reading is that it’s both passive and active at the same time. You engage your mind, focus and imagination in a unique way, and you can be lying in bed for hours at a time while you do it. The best of both worlds.
A profound essay, and loved the phrase - ‘reading as a rebellious act’.
Yes reading on the train is the BEST! The longer the train ride, the better.
A lovely read, even if I read it on a screen! The Book of Paper I am reading today is George R. Stewart’s novel, Storm, an “eco-novel,” in which the main character is indeed a storm, moving implacably from birth to death in twelve days. The humans scurrying below are the minor, unnamed chapters (though their fates engage us). Difficult to put down, taking rests from it to work on my own writing projects, happy for that back-and-forth.
By the way, I’m reading this book (an NYRB Press reprint) because of a beautifully-written review I read (on a screen) at 3 Quarks Daily. So, screen and paper are not necessarily so diametrically opposed . . .
Very thoughtful and timely. After querying literary agents and small publishing houses for the last 18 months and getting nowhere, I loved this line, "Our unimaginative, insular modern publishing conglomerates.
You are right about writing being good for the mind and soul. I think it's good for the culture too. Nowadays young people get their history online in little dibs and dabs, most of it twisted. But like you say in your piece, it's not just the young people who do not read, it's older folks as well. Yes, the phone is addictive. That's why for the past two years I've owned a flip phone. I use it strictly as a phone and on occasion I use the alarm. That's it. Yes, I have a computer, but it stays at home on the desk. I know people who only read on their phones, short things.
I have friends I grew up with. Wherever we went, we would look for a book store to browse in, often buying books.
Who is served by the trend of 'not reading books?' The corporate-state.
I never thought I would ever quote Al Gore, but here it is, "The 'well-informed citizenry is in danger of becoming the 'well-amused audience'.- Al Gore
It’s even worse now it’s the well influenced TikTok addicts 😂
A wise man that al gore, I heard he invented the interwebs 😎
I'm retired, living on a fixed income that doesn't leave me with the budget to buy books. I download pirated copies from wherever I can find them and read everything on a tablet screen. I even have Wordsworth's The Prelude and the best Shelley biography of all time in epub format on my handy little tab. I "majored" in the Romantics during my decade as a student in the 80s.
I am an amateur photographer, working with used equipment, all digital, because any incursion into the now-trendy "analog" world of film photography would simply be beyond my means. Plus, I just love the freedom digital equipment provides in abundance.
Even though we often hear that "the hipster" has passed into the dark of historical time (was it an "era" in the way that word is used now?), the hipster aesthetic was all about a kind of nostalgia for the pre-digital world, hence "vintage" this or that. And the preference for "analog" books over digital is in the same vein as the preference for film cameras over digital.
I suspect that the need for upper middle class boys and girls to maintain their superiority via accumulations of "cultural capital", ie hipsterism, has not so much gone away as morphed into what looks like "literary Substack" but smacks of high school cafeteria tables the way we've seen them in Hollywood teen flics for decades now.
When I compare this "world" to that of the English Romantics, I find it passing difficult to compare "social media influencers" with large fawning Substack followings to William Blake beavering away in obscurity or Shelley being chased by the original FBI/MI5. And while it is true that Byron may have been the original "rock star", he died fighting for Greek freedom, not trying to expand his reach on social media.
I’ve always been an avid reader of anything in print in front of me; now it seems all my reading is online articles such as yours (I’ve always been a news hound, too). It cuts into my book reading. Must make a change.
The death of the literary mind is the death of civilization.
Beautiful article. I agree. From time to time, I've fallen for the utilitarian choice--until I spend an afternoon reading in nature.
When people say they don’t like reading I know they either haven’t read enough or they are lazy people who just scroll endlessly on their phone
I wouldn’t read a book by a non reader any more than listen to a tune by a musician who never heard music 😎
“The best way to win that concentration back—that firm and durable intelligence—is through the practice of reading books.” I don’t disagree, but there are many other ways to do this: through a faith practice, through a trade (the guys who tiled my shower had excellent concentration), through mastery of a musical instrument, even through folk arts like hunting, gathering, gardening, and cooking. I don’t think I have ever experienced more intense focus than while tracking an elk in Montana. There are many kinds of intelligence.