love letter to reading, cont'd

I felt an urge to write a little bit more about reading, and why it's so crucial to my life and sense of self. These two books in particular, both written by Alain de Botton, triggered these thoughts:

1. The Consolations of Philosophy. This book distills the work of six philosophers to offer practical advice for facing everyday social, romantic, and financial problems. The chapter about Michael Montaigne, in particular, talked a lot about the advantages (and shortcomings) of reading.

2. How Proust Can Change Your Life. In this book, de Botton offers more practical self-help advice, this time from the life and writings of Marcel Proust.

The Joys of Reading
De Botton quotes Proust in saying that in books, readers are actually "reading their own selves," and that he "privileges the connection between ourselves and works of art" very highly. But why? "Because it is the only way in which art can properly affect rather than simply distract us from life."

This is, perhaps, one of the best descriptions of the ideal purpose of literature that I've ever read. And it illustrates perfectly the dichotomy I see between bad art (escapist art) and good art (affecting, edifying art). All the "bad books" that I read in the past couple of years were nothing but escapism. I entered them with this purpose in mind, and they didn't touch me or affect me in any way. I didn't see, or read my own self, in the characters. And for this reason, they were, as Proust says, little more than a distraction, usually pleasant, from the dredge of everyday life. Which is not to say that there's no use for escapist art. Whereas I try not to waste my time on bad books, I frequently watch what I know are bad movies, and even enjoy them. They're not edifying, but they're still entertaining, which is their purpose. Most TV is the same. Sometimes, when I don't want to think too hard, I just want to laugh without being affected or edified too much. And that's the success of art as escapism.

But great books, and great art, de Botton argues, can do so much more than that:

"Ruskin had expressed things that Proust might have felt himself but could not have articulated on his own; in Ruskin, he found experiences that he had never been more than semiconscious of raised and beautifully assembled in language."

Everyone has, I imagine, had this experience, where the author seems to have plucked something inchoate from the soul, and expressed clearly and beautiful what had previously seemed ineffable. My favorite line in the movie The History Boys deals with a similar feeling:

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."

That "maybe even someone long dead" strikes me in particular, because I've been reading a lot more "classics" lately. I'd never been a big lover of the classics, dismissing them, obviously erroneously, as outdated and boring. I've always been more drawn to contemporary fiction--my three favorite novelists (John Irving, Richard Russo, and Haruki Murakami) are all alive. But thanks, again, to Tim, I read both Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina in the past month. And I absolutely loved AK, although when I tried to read it in high school I found it boring and quit almost immediately. It's nice to know that my tastes are advancing, I guess. Shakespeare is a notable exception, a dead writer that I pretty much generally appreciate, but I still haven't read anything beyond his most popular plays (for fear of being bored or confused, I imagine). I guess it's not just that I dismissed the classics as outdated, as some aspects of them inarguably are, but rather, that I'd seen them as irrelevant. Proust expresses it perfectly:

"People of bygone ages seem infinitely remote from us... We are amazed when we come across an emotion more or less like what we feel today in a Homeric hero... It is as though we imagined the epic poet... to be as remote from ourselves as an animal seen in a zoo."

De Botton continues: "But an advantage of more prolonged encounters with Proust or Homer is that worlds that had seemed threateningly alien reveal themselves to be essentially much like our own."

The reason I'd previously been unable to appreciate books written long ago, and been skeptical of what they had to say to me, was because I suspected I had little in common with these characters from such a different age. Before starting AK I feared Russian society life would be incomprehensible (and boring) to me, then was pleasantly surprised. And as promised, I was able to identify strongly with Anna, and found that her world was, although vastly different, essentially much like my own in all the ways that mattered. At Proust's suggestion I would like to go back and read the Iliad again, keeping in mind particularly that the characters are, in fact, humans with emotions just like mine. Inevitably, I will see myself and people I know in all well-crafted characters, no matter when or where they were crafted. That's the mark of a good author. I guess Proust is right... I really do try to read myself in every book.

The Limitations of Books
There are, however, limitations to what we can learn from books. Tim and I were discussing, recently, how people who read often are generally assumed to be "smart," at least in some way. (I'm guilty, I suspect, of thinking that I'm smart for this reason too.) And while reading certainly is necessary, Proust argues that just reading is not enough to enrich onself.

"It becomes dangerous when instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place, when the truth no longer appears to us as an ideal which we can realise only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of our heart, but as something material, deposited between the leaves of books like a honey fully prepared by others."

I have, in the past, finished a book and felt as if I'd accomplished something, or gained something. But I've forgotten nearly every book I read in the past twenty-three years. I've forgotten most of the facts I memorized as a history major, and retained only a small percentage of the arguments I struggled to follow. I've read hundred of novels, but I can't name many characters that really affected me, or quote lines that struck me as so thought-provoking at the time. I like to read poetry, to pick it up and read it and put it down, can name several poets who I like, but I can't quote more than a handful of lines, or express, with any concreteness, why it is that I like them.

Too often the things I read go right through me. Looking only to be entertained, I don't grapple with the content, or struggle to understand, so I don't remember or learn from what I read. I stumble on striking ideas, underline or highlight them, then say to myself, "That's interesting." Maybe I even mention them to someone else. I then feel intelligent, accomplished, as if I've gained some sort of knowledge. Up until very recently, I would have considered just the fact that I read as sufficient evidence of my "personal life of the mind," but this is what Proust warns against. For the author, he says, the ideas of a book can be rightfully called "Conclusions." And, he argues, "There is no better way of coming to be aware of what one feels oneself than by trying to recreate in oneself what a master has felt." But for the reader the author's ideas can only be viewed as "Incitements," prompts to one's own thought.

"Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it."

I've made the mistake, for a long time, of thinking that just reading could constiute my spiritual life, could make me an intellectual. But that is, no doubt, one of the reasons why my spiritual life seemed lacking... In order to have a real spiritual life, I must look for myself in what I read, attempt to follow these masters to their conclusions, and then see how I can apply them to my own life and efforts. In this way, I pick up where the author left off, and only then can I say I've truly begun.

Something I forgot, the perfect summary of why I love reading, by Michael Montaigne: 

"It consoles me in my retreat; it relieves me of the weight of distressing idleness and, at any time, can rid me of boring company. It blunts the stabs of pain whenever pain is not too overpowering and extreme. To distract me from morose thoughts, I simply need to have recourse to books."