Do books matter in a distracted time? Lost Art of Reading by David L. Ulin
Books have been making a comeback lately and believe me that this is a good thing. At the same time, we are living in a world where content is becoming ever shorter, but our times consuming this content ever longer. I would know, as I’m guilty of it myself. Yet, I read and try to read as deeply and expansively as I could to live a contradictory life. Ulin’s book was published in 2010 in the times before TikTok was the norm for short-form content. Or reels. Or shorts.
It is important however, to reflect on what reading means in a fast paced world, that whatever we do and however fast we do things that we can’t help but to feel slow. We will never keep up with the changing times and as we drown in this blind expectation of speed we forget that the best thing we can do is actually to slow down. Reading can be that padding to life at breakneck speed, forcing us to go slow, to think deeply instead of superficially. But it is much more than that.
Ulin’s book is almost autobiographical. It is a nostalgic ride of his memories of encountering literature at an early age, the books that made him fall in love with reading, encountering (or almost encountering) the authors who he connected with. It is thus a personal book and thus, it was on the danger of blowing up under its own steam. Ulin made some valid points on reading however. Here are my takeaways of Ulin’s points:
Reading forces us to think deeper
There are no surprises here. Reading is a demanding act which forces our brain to shut down our present, dive into the book and construct the world written in the book as it is described on the page. Yet, reading is a new phenomenon in human history. The natural state of our early ancestors were distracted, to observe stimuli which may benefit them (such as preys) or harm them (such as predators).
This state of active distraction was the status quo until mankind started to be more sophisticated. Language, and its offshoot to the written word allows mankind to store and add to the existing knowledge. Yet, we are reverting back to the world of our cavemen ancestors to be constantly distracted by a different stimuli — our social media feed. Reading forces us to revert back this exhausting state of overstimuli from a broad distraction to a level of deep focus, where real knowledge and experiences can be enjoyed to their fullest.
Reading allows you to form a temporary, though close relationship with another individual
The relationship between the reader and the author is unique, though it is a one way conversation akin to a speaker and listener. Yet, it is an important conversation in which the reader builds an intimate rapport with the writer in a position of trust (or at least high engagement).
“Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness with another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.”
And in some ways, it fulfils a social need for us as we would when we have a conversation with a friend. Who knows, the friend might also be someone knowledgeable who might contribute to one’s store of experiences.
Reading makes you more engaged
Aside from being engaged with the writer, reading forces the reader to be engaged with their own context, to draw comparisons and juxtapositions and thus more engaged to the world they’re living in. Ulin described that his experience in rereading The Great Gatsby induced that feeling of longing in him that is all too familiar, a bittersweet lonely feeling. It destroys the barrier of time to know that a character from a century ago can emulate our familiar feelings (or vice versa).
But reading also makes us more engaged to what is happening around us. Ulin was always in the danger of diving deep into political distractions, especially during the post Obama elections when the book is written. But his message, in that we must question what reality is presented to us, is a question that has long been asked by Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Joyce.
The evolution (or devolution) of reading
But much of Ulin’s book also discusses the dynamics of books as a traditional media form combined with the more modern electronic screen (such as the Kindle). We balance the convenience of having a lightweight piece of silicone to carry all the books that we want to read all in the palm of our hands, yet there are drawbacks to this. One is the force of censorship where banned books may not make the list of available books. The source material may have been changed overtime, in a corrupted dystopian outcome of the novels we read.
Perhaps this is an overreaction, but Ulin is correct in that the landscape for reading is changing not just on the devices we use, but also on how we approach reading in real life. Social media, that double edged sword, keeps us disengaged (or engaged superficially at best) but allows past classics to flourish. One example is the Facebook community obsessed with re-enacting and rehashing events from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
This allows modern media to enhance the source material and build a community around it. I’m certain that Ulin has something to say about the role TikTok plays on bringing books back to the vogue. Booktoks with their minute content is digestible, bite-sized and allows a great volume of exposure to its consumers. On one hand, this is a good thing. On the other, I’m not sure if a one-minute review is enough to appreciate the depths of the book. Shit, I write long reviews so I could cover a lot of ground and most times I hadn’t even said everything that I wanted to say.
But this is a topic for another time and requires more depth of thought. Booktoks maybe good to lure new readers into reading, but I don’t think it makes them better readers. But this is not a criticism on the media itself, for we all need to start somewhere. The rest really is up to the reader. But having taken a book in one’s hand, turning the page to the title page, the epipgraph then the opening sentence has a degree of magic in itself, no matter whether it’s a shit book or a classic. Ulin’s points above remain valid.
Yet, it is a book that perhaps should make its points more structured and more lucid. For 150 pages we are engaging with Ulin (as surprisingly, a reader and a writer would) but as the discourse is heavily anecdotal, sometimes I am lost in what arguments he’s trying to make. It is one man’s lovesong to his own experiences of reading, which perhaps when he tries to put into paper falls apart like beach sand on our hand. But I don’t think he really answered resoundingly why books matter in a distracted time: anecdotal evidences are insufficient. Reading is a personal experience, and if there is a lost art to it (as Ulin titled his book), I’m still trying to find it myself.
