Book (Ends)
Everyday I Read was the title of the recent book by Korean author, Hwang Bo-Reum. It was her third book, a very short collection of her answers to why she read, with her observations reading closer to a school paper or diary, each "chapter" being only a few pages long: ...some things haven't changed. I'm still an unknown author and still reading, of course. I can't imagine otherwise. When I'm feeling a little down, or when I'm trying to understand something, whether it's about the bigger world out there, everyday life, about myself, or you, I turn to my shelves. Books may not give me answers, but they nudge me towards the right directions. I keep their words close to my heart. Knowing that I'm not navigating life alone makes me feel a little more courageous, a little less unsure. Sure sounds good, and many reviewers, perhaps because reading and reviewing is their job, gushed over the "wisdom" of her words as if wanting to show others that there was value in this young author's notations. But Kirkus Reviews summed up my thoughts of the book when they wrote: A pleasant, if superficial, set of exhortations to read books to get more out of life. Duh...
Hwang is young (in many Asian cultures, the "first" name that appears is generally the family name, opposite that of the Christian method common in Western countries where your family or birth name comes last), still in her 30s, and what was more interesting about the title of her book, coupled with her youthful photo, was that she was bucking the trend here in both the US and the UK. Author Katherine Rundell (mentioned in earlier posts) wrote in the LRB: The National Literacy Trust estimates that nearly a million children in the UK don’t own a single book of their own. Between 2010 and 2020, almost eight hundred libraries were closed – and of those that now remain, a third have reduced their hours. Our government’s spending on libraries is far lower than most European countries: £12 annually per capita, compared to Finland’s £50. Alongside our fight to get books into children’s lives, we face the eruption in social media use among the young. You can’t get a child hooked on reading when there is an alternative pastime that will eat their attention like a wolf. A quarter of three and four-year-olds in the UK own their own smartphone. It’s hard to talk about children and social media without sounding puritanical. Things aren't much better here in the US where high school and several other grade reading levels are the lowest in over 30 years...
Whatever happened to reading, writing, 'rithmetic? Does anyone even use the term arithmetic anymore? The Conversation went on to ask if writing (and math) may be also heading for the dustbin since so many children and students are letting AI do all of the work for them (many students no longer do multiplication tables, having adopted the "new" math vs. the old memorization of "tables" and forulas). Then came this -- reading may extend your life by nearly 2 years, according to the results from a study by the Yale School of Public Health. Wait, 2 years? Wrote a piece in National Geographic: ...research increasingly suggests that reading may be more powerful than we realize. In fact, doing so regularly has been linked to lower stress, stronger memory, protection against cognitive decline and dementia, and even a longer life. “When you get lost in a book, you often enter a trance-like state similar to meditation and that state is deeply protective,” says Zoe Shaw, a Los Angeles–based psychotherapist who studies reading and longevity.
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| Cartoon by Bruno Pieroni/ New Yorker |
With that, let me jump back to my ongoing task of clearing out my clutter. One of the folders I came across during my decluttering was a collection of letters and photos I had saved from decades ago, one letter being from a girl I had dated but one who had also tried to commit suicide 3 times (thankfully it was before we dated; her letters thanking me for helping her delve into a few positive thoughts); another note came from a girl thanking me for getting her then-boyfriend through a breakup (he was an old high school friend who had nowhere to go and I had let him stay in the place I was renting, only for me to come home from work one day and find that he had plunged a knife into his stomach in despair but got himself to a hospital and suffered no lasting damage). Gee, what sort of people was I associating with back in the day? A letter from my step-father (angry at the time) made me peek across my shoulder as if he were somehow still glowering behind me, and a different letter from my mother telling me that I had been a good son. One also came from my brother giving me his sage advice during a break-up period of my own (I still miss getting advice from him), and there was even a letter I had written long ago to a friend telling him of how much he had meant to me and how he had helped to shape my life. Almost all of those friends are long gone (not sure about the suicide girl) but I had to wonder why I had kept such writings, even if they proved fun to re-read now that over 40 years had passed. But along with those letters were a few copies of letters I had sent to others. Why? Who knows? Perhaps I thought at the time that I would need to see for myself just who I was and to discover if I had grown or changed somehow. In one letter I wrote about a few of those past girlfriends and guys I had known, saying: I think that's really how I want to remember them all, to think of them as fantasies, the guys are great drinking buddies, the girls as real hellions. I doubt that I really knew any of them, but I remember them as I envisioned, images already created but false (or were they?) I'll never know...perhaps only after this life when we're allowed to ask 10 questions (one of my first would be, "Do I have to go back?").
Then I picked up a few older books, also destined for the donation or recycle pile, one being by Gail Caldwell on losing her close friend: It's an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that too...Before one enters this spectrum of sorrow, which changes even the color of trees, there is a blind and daringly wrong assumption that probably allows us to blunder through the days. There is a way one thinks that the show will never end -- or that loss, when it comes, will be toward the end of the road, not in its middle...Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us apart -- time and space and the heart's weariness are the blander executioners of human connection. As I approached those few friends for whom I still had an address or an email, and asked if they wanted any of those letters from the 80s, most politely declined, and one never answered. Perhaps what had passed was past and they didn't want to re-live any of it. And perhaps just as with that thought of an end coming --as Caldwell put it: ...the violence of time itself, as though some great barge carrying the rest of us had left [others] stranded on the shore-- that was what all those letters and past articles and trinkets of life were: best left on the shore, the barge moving too quickly down river to rescue or retrieve them, "life's irrefutable forward motion, a one-way arrow pointed past the dead."
One of the last pieces to head for the trash was this piece I wrote after visiting Washington, D. C., back in the day before signs were ordered to be changed and before masked men with guns appeared on corners with government approval. I wrote then that Washington, D.C. was a city filled with "exhaustive museums," but that they were "an exhaustion of pleasure filled with the awe of discovery." Museums take us on a journey often beyond our comprehension, I wrote, for in a moment --a day-- we are supposed to absorb generations of thought; we are asked to interpret in seconds that which took someone or some group of people years or decades to create. Some exhibits we simply shrug our shoulders and walk quickly past. that was nice, we say, but there's so little time. We have only one day left to see the rest of the city. No time, there's just no time. But what IS time? Given all the time in the world, how much time would we have? A lifetime may seem an eternity to a child, yet to a dying patient, a lifetime may seem irrationally short. Somehow, nearly 41 years ago in a letter dated 2/14/1985, I pondered this, writing: What would I return as? If I had a choice, I don't know how I'd answer. For every mistake I've made, I think I've forgotten the problem. And even if I swore I'd live better, I'd get into some accident, get some girl pregnant, total my car, run over a cat, go to war. Rather, I think I might be content to spin the wheel of fortune and take whatever comes up. I've love to be an architect, a salesman, a con artist, a female prostitute, a bridge worker, a photographer for National Geographic, a ball player...endless. I think I'd love any of those, at least for a year or so. I wish I could spend hours just getting mind-welds of different people: what thoughts, what regrets, what feelings are flowing through them. A universal voyeur but one born of desire to learn about humans and behavior. Then on to the animals, the insects, the plants. The tree that stands against the wind, the spider that watches a raindrop destroy his chances for food, the clam that feels the fatal pull of the starfish, the lava that find freedom only brings freedom in stone, the air that cruises the globe as freely as the floating hawk. I hunger and yearn, and yet feel the ticking of the clock behind me. I think of mortality now, of time ending and perhaps becoming blackness. Looking back at that, perhaps I discovered a clue as to my clinging onto those things that mattered, at least at the time. Perhaps just as with those letters of friendship and affection and thanks, I wanted to not let it go, to treasure it once again at some point, to jar a memory or two as if to say to myself "this mattered."
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| Photo: Pete McBride/Sierra |
Read Slowly: In today's world we move through life almost without noticing or paying attention. Our phones come with us in the car or the grocery store or the doc's office. Our TV is on while we eat. Cars and trucks sail by without a thought as we navigate through crowded freeways and parking lots. As Hwang wrote: ...it's easy to fall into the impatience of wanting to read quickly and read more. But reading is about understanding the world and ourselves, not finishing as many books as possible. We aren't reading to become faster, but to feel and understand more...There are things that only those who slow down come to see -- the gift that books give to those who gently savor each sentence. It's as if all the emotions and thoughts are stirring awake...
You Don't Have to Finish: Reading can be like life in that respect, the books and magazines and podcasts and projects that "need" to be finished because so many others await. Bathroom books meant to speed along that process (ha!). As I grow older, I find that some things are simply not worth your time. Watching a part of an episode, even if highly recommended by friends, is often enough to let my wife and I know that it won't be something for us. The same with books, or articles. Even sports or eating. That "pressure" to finish, to watch it all, or to eat it all, or to make it all the way to the top. There are so many things out there and it comes down to how you value your time. As you grow older, it dawns on you with increasing clarity that time is not endless, or caring, or on your side. Time just is, and yet time can indeed be all those things. Value it...and yourself. What is important to you?
It's Okay to Forget: All that said, quite often my wife and I will spot an interesting series only to find that we've seen it (thanks to those red lines that let you know that). But that doesn't mean you could describe everything and every detail. That book you read some years ago probably now comes down to a single sentence when describing it to others. Still, each of us could find movies we'd enjoy watching again (we just re-watched Forget Paris with a young Debra Winger and Billy Crystal). Books maybe not so much, especially mysteries because, well, you likely (hopefully) remember the ending. I am slowly re-reading Imagine a City by Mark Vanhoenacker, a captain of large commercial jets and his views of cities. As a review in The Observer wrote: While Vanhoenacker takes us on fascinating journeys to Brasília and Cape Town, Liverpool and Jeddah, this is not just a travelogue of the cities in which he lands. Instead, Imagine a City becomes a philosophical interrogation of what home means and how we might shape it in our minds to be a place of succor and safety. It's a slow read for me this time, an escape that proves more historical and reflective instead of descriptive (think The Tender Bar), and also a book I only pick up now and then with no real need to finish. Sometimes, just as when talking with a long-time friend, you discover things and details you missed on the first go-around, a time when you were likely in a hurry. Like those letters I was now throwing out...
There were more observations in Hwang's book, but as short as it was it was something to just quickly skim through, and that was also okay. After all, it could have been the book by Ron Chernow tracing the downward path of Mark Twain. Wait, THE Mark Twain? (his actual name was Samuel Clemens) A review in Bloomberg tells of Clemens "ambitions on not only becoming richer but obtaining world-historical wealth." With book sales and fame declining, Clemens married an heiress and lived in a 25-room house with "servants galore." 20 years later, he would be bankrupt. Wrote the review: Twain's life reached its "pinnacle of happiness" in 1885, on page 362 of Chernow's book...And then Chernow's dark book continues for 671 more pages, dedicated to the final third of Twain's increasingly unhappy life. Twain's writing never reaches the same power or consistency. His wife and two of his daughters die. His views on humanity curdle. He embarrasses himself to the modern reader --and many at the time-- by obsessively (if chastely) hanging out with young girls [as in 10- to 14-year olds]. When, on page 596, he gets to that old, misquoted Twain chestnut, the "news of my death is greatly exaggerated," the reader is kind of disappointed. There are 437 pages to go. Hmm, sounds similar to another old person now embarrassing himself...
But that up & down life of Clemens got me thinking of how many of us would choose a different path if given the chance to have a do-over. Would we shoot for the same dreams, choose a different path, have or not have children, stand up for our morals and values, vote for the same people, tell people once close to us that we loved them? It's never too late, as the saying goes, except that often it is. Which is entirely different than saying that we can't change directions now and start from this point forward. Take this from another book I'm slowly re-reading, Sentient (and I should note that my re-reading any book is very rare). Perhaps because I am where I am (older), I once again am finding the book to be a reminder of how varied the world beyond us --as in humans-- continues to be. Take something as simple as the orb spider: because of it, it was discovered that our eyes are made up of more than just rods and cones, but laced with "circadian" cells in extremely minute amounts, markers as important as a conductor guiding an orchestra. Block or remove those and you would have instruments playing but in no order (and yes, blind people possess these same cells). These circadian markers are apparently found throughout the cells in our bodies...in our livers, our kidneys, our muscles, and virtually every organ studied (sort of like mast cells). And the orb spiders? They seem to override these cells with little effect, as if able to undergo a 5-hour jet lag day after day with no effect. Did I miss all that reading the book the first time?
The apparent decline in reading has made me also feel that there's a decline in our values, or at least in those grabbing the headlines. It's as if we've lost the "civil" in civility. As one reporter opined in The New York Times: ...the aggressive tastelessness, the suffocating tackiness, the absence of class. I know some readers are going to accuse me of elitism, and I plead guilty: I miss the days when not just the Kennedys and the Obamas but also the Reagans and Bushes upheld standards of taste and decorum in Washington. What we have instead is the D.C. version of the Beverly Hillbillies. But I would venture beyond that. We seem to have reached a point where lying and denial and not taking responsibility are not only getting accepted as being okay, but are embedding themselves in our children and our society by those meant to be setting an example (and it is here I should note that the portrayal of smoking is also up 40% in both the movies and television). And while I try my best to avoid generalizing or stereotyping, it does seem that white upper-class colonialism is desperate to make a comeback: the shooting of giraffes and elephants, for sport; the use & abuse of children and young women and people of color, for sport; the manipulation of financial markets, for sport; the ignoring of the downtrodden and the planet, for sport; the lavish display of excess without concern for others, for sport. Even, or especially, the intimidation and abuse of power, for sport. If I am aghast at what is once-again happening in history, I can only imagine what the generation before me would have felt -- they who fought actual wars in order to preserve our rights and freedoms; they who may have seemed puritanical but who stood firm in what they felt were common manners (my conservative US Navy dad would never consider calling a lady "piggy"...or worse), they who weren't perfect by any means but who now seem 180 degrees more patriotic than those desperately working to stay in power. But then, perhaps my views are as dated as the math I remember learning, my mind and morals locked into a past long gone liked my saved letters (the new math is now more than 20 years old). I try not to think that. What gives me hope is that there are many folks reaching the tipping point, even world leaders such as Canada's Mark Carney who admitted that there were many people and countries being bullied by hegemons, but no longer. As Carney said: Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
Reading engages your mind and attention, wrote Elizabeth A. L. Stine-Morrow, a research professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois. “It’s what allows you to hold information in mind while processing something new, which reading constantly requires.” Unhooking ourselves from what we're being told to hear and see may not happen tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. But the awakening, the resistance, appears to have begun. More and more people and leaders are standing up for what they feel is right, not what they're being told is right. It's okay to read, and to write, and to protest, and to express yourself. As Rod Serling (mentioned in an earlier post) wrote: It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all other freedoms --all of them-- may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage. Maybe we can't go home again, but we can remember some words from a declaration: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. It was indeed, a Declaration of Independence...
We humans are often described as sentient beings, but what does that mean?, wrote author Jackie Higgins. The word, from the Latin sentire, to feel, is so mercurial that the philosopher Daniel Dennett has, perhaps playfully, suggested, "Since there is no established meaning...we are free to adopt one of our own choosing. Yet as the late biologist E.O. Wilson wrote: Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us...Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become. The surgeon Henry Marah found that as he operated on a human brain, the idea that his hands were likely disturbing thoughts and feelings "simply too strange to understand." As Higgins also noted, humans can detect only one "ten-trillionth of the electromagnetic spectrum." That's 1/10,000,000,000,000th of what is out there (other species detect many more senses than we are capable of doing). Familiarity dulls our senses and anesthetizes us to the wonder of existence, said biologist Richard Dawkins. But Joni Mitchell may have summed it up more simply when she sang "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
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