Reading Isn't So Simple

Manguel discussed reading in a way I had never thought of before: it's complicated. Our eyes take the words in through a series of connections in our brain. It's not as simple as our eyes see the words and our brain automatically understands. Manguel describes this system: "... I first apprehend the system in an apparently erratic manner, through fickle eyes, and then reconstruct the code of signs through a connecting chain of processing neurons in my brain- a chain that varies according to the nature of the text I'm reading- and imbue that text with something- emotion, physical sentience, intuition, knowledge, soul- that depends on who I am and how I became who I am" (38). It's pretty crazy that our brains put that much effort into something that we take for granted, that we do in our everyday life without even batting an eye.
Going even further, Manguel starts to talk about how silent reading started. Personally, I had never thought about it. I just assumed people always read silently unless they were rehearsing a play or doing some other public event where reading aloud was required. The fact that everyone read aloud is mind blowing and chaotic. Could you imagine if everyone in Manhattan started reading aloud? There would be no end to the noise between the advertisements on billboards, ads on buses, writing on a guy's t-shirt, newspapers, magazines, a Facebook post on a computer or phone. But people back then thought reading in silence was insane: "According to Plutarch, Alexander the Great read a letter from his mother in silence in the fourth century BC, to the bewilderment of his soldiers" (43). It's hard to believe that those people were missing out on the power of their own interpretation of literature for so long, being forced to listen to other's translations. It's almost manipulative, but interesting. We've come so far in such little time with the way we read and even write. Between how our brains decipher words on a page and how reading has evolved, I'm starting to think it's more of an art form than the hobby it's often referred to as today.

The Need to Read

I always thought reading was a dying past time; people just don't pick up a book, sit down and read. I'm a victim of the same crime. It's been years since I've read a book outside of academics. Between work and school, it's hard to find time and when I do, I'd rather spend it doing something else. But Gardener in Reading and Writing about Literature suggested that we read lots more than we are inclined to think. There's the bumper sticker on the car in front of me or the subtitles scrolling across whatever foreign show I'm currently watching. On average I read plenty more than I think I do, which is interesting. Our society isn't as keen on books as it once was, but we're far from being illiterate. Because of all the reading we do from advertisements, magazines, or bumper stickers, we may read even more so than we did in the past. Our whole society functions on our ability to do so. It shows just how important the ability to read in our current society is. Without it, we would be lost. Something as simple as reading the directions for putting a bookcase together wouldn't even be possible. This is what Manguel hints at in A History of Reading. Reading is key to the function of our society and I never realized it before. I always took it for granted as every other aspect of daily life.
Gardener does differentiate between what we read everyday and literature however. Even though as a society we probably read more than we did fifty or sixty years ago, we don't read literature. Our time spent reading is limited to trivial things such as advertisements or a junk piece of mail; we just don't read literature anymore and it stresses its importance. In a society where literature is being cast aside, literature is becoming all the more important. The ability to analyze it and gain its full meaning is essential and literature has so much to offer from an interesting new take on a common idea to an imaginative journey in a dangerous, far away land. The literature becomes a part of you and who you are and it feels like Gardner is encouraging me to pick up a novel and get into the habit of reading once again.