Why Read Again

Why Read? Again…

I have been thinking about why I find reading literature to be so important that I have dedicated my working life to getting folks reading the greatest and hardest books written. Why does reading Virginia Woolf matter in a world where cities are being occupied by outraged citizens whose ability to make a decent living is being systematically undermined? How is a six-month study of Joyce justified when people are risking their lives to bring down tyrants and murderous autocrats? Why discuss poetry as the ice bergs are melting and the ocean is rising?

I read to understand myself and others. Immersion in a work of literary merit cracks open my petty struggles and limited focus on daily events. Reading a great work of literature reminds me to aspire, and gives me company in the struggle for meaning. Reading widely about the experience of people in different times, countries, skins, faiths, worlds sharpens my understanding of my own narrow perspective and slowly, painfully helps me expand. Reading newspapers, magazines and other forms of media with a critical eye allows me a glimpse of the forces that inform our society and progress—or lack of…

I am also thinking about how literacy is more than a skill. Literacy—the ability to read and write—is not simply decoding but also the on-going development of increased understanding and analytical ability. There has been much attention paid recently to the low level of literacy in many developed countries. Deborah Orr in this week’s Guardian article commented on the correlation between those participating in this summer’s riots and their educational disengagement (see Guardian 27.10.11 G2 magazine—Read all about it: Britain’s shameful literacy crisis). Alongside the discovery that more than two thirds of the rioters are classified as special needs and at least one third had been excluded from school the previous year, Orr observes that of all the stores looted in Clapham Junction, Waterstone’s remained untouched. “Those rioters …probably didn’t even see Waterstone’s. Bookshops don’t even register, because they offer nothing that is wanted. To me, that seems like a miserable omission from a life, and an ignominious, debilitating exclusion from a civilized culture.”

I agree with Orr’s assessment—but realize how hard it is to explain to someone who is not a strong reader why it is worth the effort. I struggle to explain why reading Ulysses is worth the effort—though I KNOW it is. But it is for me: and thus I find myself constantly revisiting the question of Why Read to really make deeply sure that it is not just my means of satisfaction that drives me forward into these studies of Milton and Dante. So today I think about the gorgeous moments of the last two months in our studies of Frankenstein and the Divine Comedy. Moments when we suddenly understood where we have come from and why we still struggle to define the relationship between the Creator and the Created. I think of our conversation around Measure for Measure and how this unleashed a new awareness of the complex relationship between authority and sexuality.

Reading and discussion of great literature exposes the truths we build our lives on—and then allows us the opportunity to explore these truths and re-define them. And that is a powerful-even revolutionary–act.

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