On Reading

My predilection is for the printed word, let me say that up front. I love books, I'm almost literally surrounded by them, thousands and thousands of them. What I do know, to answer Montaigne's question, I've learned from observing and from reading. How do we assign value? Who I am is because of my reading, and I like what and whom I am become. Seldom bored, usually happy, enjoying both the work I do for a living and the time I spend alone. A comprehensive whole, the hermeneutic circle. These three-day week-ends, that I'll be resuming now that D is on summer break, allow me 24 hours of reading time. Just finished "The Gutenberg Elegies", a very good book on reading by Sven Birkerts in which he argues that "The medium matters because it defines the arena of sentience." I listen to books on tape, occasionally, on long car trips (I try not to fly), but it's really not the same as hunkering down in a comfortable spot, with decent light, and physically opening a book. The smell is missing (many of the books I read are old) and that tactile sense of actually turning pages. I love the access to information a high-speed connection permits, but when I'm at home, I look up Phillip Sidney in the 11th Britannica, and read it with the magnifying glass from my two-volume OED, because my set is small, on bible paper, printed in 8 point type. A printed book requires physical attention. Move too fast, or without consideration, and you can tear a page; people who love books hate tearing pages, and tend to be more careful. I've watched people, at the bar in the pub, tearing through the APS of their IPhones, and I wouldn't loan them a book. They wouldn't know how to treat it. A young hawk glides in, settles on a branch, an immature red-tail; she, I think it's a she, from my reading, is looking for small rodents. Her eyes are black holes. She sees things I don't see, which upsets the balance of reality: what is really there, for instance. I was reading Lewis Turco's "The New Book of Forms" today, and came across the word parecnasis, which is a technique of digression. Where you leave the main argument, for a time, to talk about other things, that don't seem to be related. But, of course, they are, and then you bring your whole argument in from left-field and look like a fucking genius. I hate to really (Glenn is right, correct, to latch onto that word, universes) draw conclusions, but we're all getting dumber. I finally have to call him, because I can't remember, that it was Kit Smart who wrote about his cat. A long history of crazy writers. That push the envelope, make us think. Really, you know, we should offer health insurance, and dental care, there's no reason poets should have bad teeth. What we had talked about later was probably the issue, something symbolic and important, I don't remember exactly, it involved what we were talking about. Nothing, as it happened.