Uncategorized
Ways of Reading
Last Wednesday, my wife and I went to see the newest Harry Potter movie, The Half-Blood Prince. As someone who had never read a Harry Potter book yet still enjoyed the previous movies well enough, I was happily willing to go but not especially eager nor overjoyed with anticipation the way my wife and the majority of the audience seemed to be.
As it turned out, the movie was great fun: full of action and drama and mystery and cool special effects. In fact, by the time the end credits rolled I had completely succumbed to its spell: I wanted (no – needed!) to know what would happen next and how things would be resolved.
My wife refused to give me answers: “Guess you’ll have to read the final book for yourself or else wait until the next movie comes out.” Frustrated, I called my brother for answers and he said basically the same thing: “You should read the final book. It’s a quick read.”
For me, a quick read is never a quick read. Unlike my brother and my wife, I tend to read very slowly. So when I picked up the seventh Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows, and held the nearly-800 page tome in my hands, I had the distinct feeling that I would be dedicating the rest of my summer to completing it.
That was Wednesday evening. Flash forward to last night around 11:00. Only four days later. Sitting on the couch in our living room. I turned the final page, closed the book, and said to my wife, “I finished it.” Neither one of us could believe it. The slowest reader on planet earth had devoured 700+ pages in four days. How could it be possible?
It got me thinking.
How is the experience of reading Harry Potter different than the experience of reading, say, Gravity’s Rainbow? How is it that I can spend 2 hours reading 20 pages of Gravity’s Rainbow and then turn around and spend 2 hours reading 80 pages of Harry Potter?
Maybe you’re thinking that’s a dumb question, Harry Potter being a kid’s book and Gravity’s Rainbow being an adult book, the obviously differing levels of sophistication and complexity in content, ideas, concepts, language usage, syntax, diction, etc.
But I’m thinking it might be something other than those obvious distinctions that make the experience qualitatively different. I’m thinking it has something to do with the way we read, rather than what we read.
Perhaps it is a matter of the phenomenological act of reading: whether you tend to look at every word or skim or skip passages, whether you tend to read and then reread passages or read them once and move on, whether you tend to visualize the text in your mind as you are reading or experience the words as concepts on the page. Perhaps it has to do with the reasons we read: our purposes or intentions when we approach a text. Perhaps it has to do with our training: how we were taught to read, what we were taught to look for, to notice, to value.
I don’t know. What do you think?
Well, not all texts are equal. Some books are full of dialogue, which generally makes the pages fly by. Some books try to make each sentence something new and bizarre, requiring a little extra parsing on the reader’s part, while others contain new ideas once a chapter at most. Some novels are like story problems — you’re reading to get the salient facts and then try to solve the mystery; the quality of the writing doesn’t really matter as long as the problem itself is entertaining. And then some novels don’t HAVE an answer — they’re all about the ambiguity, the atmosphere, the perfectly captured emotions. I think all these factors have a huge affect on reading speed.
Well, not all texts are equal. Some books are full of dialogue, which generally makes the pages fly by. Some books try to make each sentence something new and bizarre, requiring a little extra parsing on the reader’s part, while others contain new ideas once a chapter at most. Some novels are like story problems — you’re reading to get the salient facts and then try to solve the mystery; the quality of the writing doesn’t really matter as long as the problem itself is entertaining. And then some novels don’t HAVE an answer — they’re all about the ambiguity, the atmosphere, the perfectly captured emotions. I think all these factors have a huge affect on reading speed.
I’m more interested in why that Harry Potter poster looks like promotional art for Alien.
I’m more interested in why that Harry Potter poster looks like promotional art for Alien.
I think that all of the things you mentioned are a factor, as well as what Joel noted. But it may also have to do a little with our understanding of story. Harry Potter is a familiar story and a familiar world. Wizards and magic and teenage crushes are all stories we’ve heard, before. The battle between good and evil is familiar and while the universe of Harry Potter is unique, it is not necessarily unexpected. Combine that with really uncomplicated sentences and lots of dialogue and a reader can move through it pretty quickly. Something like Gravity’s Rainbow is more complicated and unfamiliar. There’s nothing comforting about it. Maybe sort of like driving or finding your way around a city. If it’s the city you grew up in, or visited often when you were young, it’s easy to get from place to place. Even if things have changed, the routes are basically the same. But when you are thrown into an entirely new place, where the roads twist unexpectedly and there are no landmarks to reemind you that this is somewhere you’ve passed by before, the going is much slower.
I think that all of the things you mentioned are a factor, as well as what Joel noted. But it may also have to do a little with our understanding of story. Harry Potter is a familiar story and a familiar world. Wizards and magic and teenage crushes are all stories we’ve heard, before. The battle between good and evil is familiar and while the universe of Harry Potter is unique, it is not necessarily unexpected. Combine that with really uncomplicated sentences and lots of dialogue and a reader can move through it pretty quickly. Something like Gravity’s Rainbow is more complicated and unfamiliar. There’s nothing comforting about it. Maybe sort of like driving or finding your way around a city. If it’s the city you grew up in, or visited often when you were young, it’s easy to get from place to place. Even if things have changed, the routes are basically the same. But when you are thrown into an entirely new place, where the roads twist unexpectedly and there are no landmarks to reemind you that this is somewhere you’ve passed by before, the going is much slower.
My comment disappeared.
A story that concerns itself with reassessing the way we see the world or the way we use language is a slower read. A story that concerns itself with other things—and there is nothing wrong with these types of stories—includes any number of places where we, without even realizing it, skim or speed through because we can anticipate the way a sentence resolves after a few words. Or because of the information in the previous sentence. Or the previous paragraph.
Like the way our brain reads words when only the first and last letters are in place.
I had a teacher who would joke about reading the big, big Tom Clancy novels in an afternoon because Clancy writes topic sentences at the beginning of each paragraph. Topic sentence. Three sentences of description of an airplane or a piece of spy equipment that you really don’t need to read. Paragraph break. Topic sentence. Etc.
My comment disappeared.
A story that concerns itself with reassessing the way we see the world or the way we use language is a slower read. A story that concerns itself with other things—and there is nothing wrong with these types of stories—includes any number of places where we, without even realizing it, skim or speed through because we can anticipate the way a sentence resolves after a few words. Or because of the information in the previous sentence. Or the previous paragraph.
Like the way our brain reads words when only the first and last letters are in place.
I had a teacher who would joke about reading the big, big Tom Clancy novels in an afternoon because Clancy writes topic sentences at the beginning of each paragraph. Topic sentence. Three sentences of description of an airplane or a piece of spy equipment that you really don’t need to read. Paragraph break. Topic sentence. Etc.
Hey Joel, thanks for your comment.
What you say is true, but my goal here is to try and shift the conversation away from focusing on the text, toward focusing on the ways we read. It is my contention that regardless of whether or not a text is full of dialogue or full of bizarre sentences, an equally important (but strangely, seldom discussed) element of the reading experience exists in the approach to reading that the reader brings to it.
In other words, I’m interested in a discussion about how we read, not what we read.
Does that make sense?
Hey Joel, thanks for your comment.
What you say is true, but my goal here is to try and shift the conversation away from focusing on the text, toward focusing on the ways we read. It is my contention that regardless of whether or not a text is full of dialogue or full of bizarre sentences, an equally important (but strangely, seldom discussed) element of the reading experience exists in the approach to reading that the reader brings to it.
In other words, I’m interested in a discussion about how we read, not what we read.
Does that make sense?
Hi margosita, thanks for your comments.
I like your driving analogy, and I think you’ve got a good point about the familiarity/unfamiliarity of certain texts.
My question would be: do you think you bring the same reading approach with you every time you pick up a book, or are you constantly changing your approach to suit the particular text? If the former, how does that effect your ability to comprehend/judge differing texts? If the latter, how do you adapt/change your approach if you are completely unfamiliar with the elements presented by a particular text?
Hi margosita, thanks for your comments.
I like your driving analogy, and I think you’ve got a good point about the familiarity/unfamiliarity of certain texts.
My question would be: do you think you bring the same reading approach with you every time you pick up a book, or are you constantly changing your approach to suit the particular text? If the former, how does that effect your ability to comprehend/judge differing texts? If the latter, how do you adapt/change your approach if you are completely unfamiliar with the elements presented by a particular text?
hm. interesting idea christopher. by the way, bright stupid confetti is dope as fuck. that being said, i think harry potter and similar work that is narrative-driven tend to be weighted in objects, things and so we can read, digest and ruminate on them in a quicker fashion than work that tends to revel in ambiguities or ideas, i.e. poetry or the dense work of someone like gary lutz or juan goytisolo. there’s greater amounts of play in ideas and abstractions that cause the reader to say, what a minute, what the fuck is going on and so we’re not necessarily going to want to move to the next page. lutz called it “page-hugging” vs. “page-turning.” we want to sit with the page because of the ideas or even, sometimes, the language. and in the case of lutz or others who subscribe to lishian aesthetics, it’s this very elliptical nature that causes the reader to do a bit more work, though i believe, the payoffs are greater. is this making sense? i’m drinking in the afternoon and so i hope some ideas cohere.
hm. interesting idea christopher. by the way, bright stupid confetti is dope as fuck. that being said, i think harry potter and similar work that is narrative-driven tend to be weighted in objects, things and so we can read, digest and ruminate on them in a quicker fashion than work that tends to revel in ambiguities or ideas, i.e. poetry or the dense work of someone like gary lutz or juan goytisolo. there’s greater amounts of play in ideas and abstractions that cause the reader to say, what a minute, what the fuck is going on and so we’re not necessarily going to want to move to the next page. lutz called it “page-hugging” vs. “page-turning.” we want to sit with the page because of the ideas or even, sometimes, the language. and in the case of lutz or others who subscribe to lishian aesthetics, it’s this very elliptical nature that causes the reader to do a bit more work, though i believe, the payoffs are greater. is this making sense? i’m drinking in the afternoon and so i hope some ideas cohere.
oh shit. i think i fucked things up. in regards to reading i think i go into every piece differently, using the first couple sentences as a signifier. is this shit going to flow quickly or is it going to be some head numbingly dense that i have to set it aside every ten minutes and scream furies into a pillow (the latter is actually my favorite kind, don’t get it twisted)? yeah. so. different unto each.
Hey Matthew,
The Tom Clancy example is really interesting. It seems like one of the assumptions with that particular approach is that descriptions are superfluous — another assumption is that what is most valuable is information, plot progression, etc. If someone were to take that particular approach to any of the nouveau roman texts, Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy, for example, I suppose they would quickly feel stymied, annoyed, pissed off, because their reading approach would not work at all. (I use that particular example since it is basically composed of pure description.)
I think that might be part of what I’m trying to get at…
When I was reading Harry Potter I was not using my standard reading approach. I consciously had to adjust it to work with the text. I am not at all used to reading things like Harry Potter. I feel much more comfortable reading Gravity’s Rainbow, actually, because it is the kind of text I spend the majority of my time with. Plot-based texts, like Harry Potter, or I imagine Tom Clancy, are technically more difficult for me to read because they exercise a part of my brain that I hardly ever use. But, strangely, I was able to read quicker. That paradox is what interests me.
oh shit. i think i fucked things up. in regards to reading i think i go into every piece differently, using the first couple sentences as a signifier. is this shit going to flow quickly or is it going to be some head numbingly dense that i have to set it aside every ten minutes and scream furies into a pillow (the latter is actually my favorite kind, don’t get it twisted)? yeah. so. different unto each.
Hey Matthew,
The Tom Clancy example is really interesting. It seems like one of the assumptions with that particular approach is that descriptions are superfluous — another assumption is that what is most valuable is information, plot progression, etc. If someone were to take that particular approach to any of the nouveau roman texts, Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy, for example, I suppose they would quickly feel stymied, annoyed, pissed off, because their reading approach would not work at all. (I use that particular example since it is basically composed of pure description.)
I think that might be part of what I’m trying to get at…
When I was reading Harry Potter I was not using my standard reading approach. I consciously had to adjust it to work with the text. I am not at all used to reading things like Harry Potter. I feel much more comfortable reading Gravity’s Rainbow, actually, because it is the kind of text I spend the majority of my time with. Plot-based texts, like Harry Potter, or I imagine Tom Clancy, are technically more difficult for me to read because they exercise a part of my brain that I hardly ever use. But, strangely, I was able to read quicker. That paradox is what interests me.
Hi Gene, thanks for the kind words re: bright stupid confetti, much appreciated.
In terms of your comments: YES! You make great sense, especially when you say “there’s greater amounts of play in ideas and abstractions that cause the reader to say, what a minute, what the fuck is going on and so we’re not necessarily going to want to move to the next page.”
That’s it!!! When I read what I tend to read, which includes Lutz and Goytisolo, I enjoy reveling in the free play between their ideas and my ideas about their ideas; whereas with Harry Potter, I was simply absorbing information.
This is very interesting.
Hi Gene, thanks for the kind words re: bright stupid confetti, much appreciated.
In terms of your comments: YES! You make great sense, especially when you say “there’s greater amounts of play in ideas and abstractions that cause the reader to say, what a minute, what the fuck is going on and so we’re not necessarily going to want to move to the next page.”
That’s it!!! When I read what I tend to read, which includes Lutz and Goytisolo, I enjoy reveling in the free play between their ideas and my ideas about their ideas; whereas with Harry Potter, I was simply absorbing information.
This is very interesting.
the way people read probably has something to do with what each person expects to experience from a text. One facet of that expectation is what we know about a text going into it and another facet is our individualized and general expectation of all art, or our taste. In extreme cases, such as reading harry potter, i think we kind of know we shouldn’t be expecting anything more than something written for children, so that trumps our ‘taste’ or maybe that is our taste, and we go with it. I think at some point though, our craving for what we want our art to do for us takes over. My harry potter experience was that I read books 1-4 when they came out, and mostly because like you say they are strangely very quick reads, even 4 which was in the 700 page range (although check the word count per page. I have a feeling HPs overall wordcount and GRs wordcount are incomparable). HP books are made to seem large to give kids a sense of confidence that they have the ability to read large books. Anyway, I started reading 5 order of the phoenix and about halfway through i was reading a chapter that it suddenly occurred to me was horribly written. I could forgive all the horrible writing for a long time because the story was there I guess, but at some point the story waned or I was just mentally done with it and my personal expectation kicked in and I suddenly couldn’t forgive it. I stopped reading it and haven’t touched another HP book since.
there are times, many, when I’m reading or watching something on tv that I really want there to be more to so I will look for things that probably arent’ there, or sometimes they are. I was watching Wedding Singer some day weeks ago on cable and there was a scene where adam sandler refers to himself as buddy hackett, then very soon after, there’s a scene at a piano and on the piano is the sheet music of The Music Man, which buddy hackett was in, and suddenly I’m watching the film in a completely different way, looking for connections.
the way people read probably has something to do with what each person expects to experience from a text. One facet of that expectation is what we know about a text going into it and another facet is our individualized and general expectation of all art, or our taste. In extreme cases, such as reading harry potter, i think we kind of know we shouldn’t be expecting anything more than something written for children, so that trumps our ‘taste’ or maybe that is our taste, and we go with it. I think at some point though, our craving for what we want our art to do for us takes over. My harry potter experience was that I read books 1-4 when they came out, and mostly because like you say they are strangely very quick reads, even 4 which was in the 700 page range (although check the word count per page. I have a feeling HPs overall wordcount and GRs wordcount are incomparable). HP books are made to seem large to give kids a sense of confidence that they have the ability to read large books. Anyway, I started reading 5 order of the phoenix and about halfway through i was reading a chapter that it suddenly occurred to me was horribly written. I could forgive all the horrible writing for a long time because the story was there I guess, but at some point the story waned or I was just mentally done with it and my personal expectation kicked in and I suddenly couldn’t forgive it. I stopped reading it and haven’t touched another HP book since.
there are times, many, when I’m reading or watching something on tv that I really want there to be more to so I will look for things that probably arent’ there, or sometimes they are. I was watching Wedding Singer some day weeks ago on cable and there was a scene where adam sandler refers to himself as buddy hackett, then very soon after, there’s a scene at a piano and on the piano is the sheet music of The Music Man, which buddy hackett was in, and suddenly I’m watching the film in a completely different way, looking for connections.
I read HP4 on a friend’s insistence. it was part of an “i dont want to read that” trade, and I made her read It by Stephen King. I got through the HP book in a day flat. We read quickly when the writing propels us, when it is clear and energetic, and when you constantly want to know **what happens next**. The HP books are great because they’re fun, and stimulating, but not deep in the sense that individual sentences require great parsing, or that the form itself presents a challenge, as in Pynchon, say, or Joyce. Not every book is designed to be read quickly. When I read Jack Spicer’s poems, for example, I feel like I constantly have to slow myself down, because the text yields to a quick read, but the experience of the poems’ fullness requires ease and repetition. HP books don’t need those things. I’m not saying you scan or skim Potter, I’m just saying that you can gobble it all down without ever looking back. It’s more like running a marathon than taking a nature hike.
I read HP4 on a friend’s insistence. it was part of an “i dont want to read that” trade, and I made her read It by Stephen King. I got through the HP book in a day flat. We read quickly when the writing propels us, when it is clear and energetic, and when you constantly want to know **what happens next**. The HP books are great because they’re fun, and stimulating, but not deep in the sense that individual sentences require great parsing, or that the form itself presents a challenge, as in Pynchon, say, or Joyce. Not every book is designed to be read quickly. When I read Jack Spicer’s poems, for example, I feel like I constantly have to slow myself down, because the text yields to a quick read, but the experience of the poems’ fullness requires ease and repetition. HP books don’t need those things. I’m not saying you scan or skim Potter, I’m just saying that you can gobble it all down without ever looking back. It’s more like running a marathon than taking a nature hike.
Good thoughts, as always, Darby. I’m especially intrigued by this:
“…about halfway through i was reading a chapter that it suddenly occurred to me was horribly written. I could forgive all the horrible writing for a long time because the story was there I guess, but at some point the story waned or I was just mentally done with it and my personal expectation kicked in and I suddenly couldn’t forgive it.”
It’s as if you had suspended your typical approach to reading and then something happened to remind you of that default approach, which in turn disallowed you to resume your suspension.
(I am reminded of an episode of the television show How I Met Your Mother in which the friends of the main character tell him about an annoying habit committed by the woman he is dating, a habit he has never noticed, but after they point it out he can’t stop noticing it until it becomes so overwhelming that it drives him crazy and he has to dump her.)
What a strange phenomenon.
Good thoughts, as always, Darby. I’m especially intrigued by this:
“…about halfway through i was reading a chapter that it suddenly occurred to me was horribly written. I could forgive all the horrible writing for a long time because the story was there I guess, but at some point the story waned or I was just mentally done with it and my personal expectation kicked in and I suddenly couldn’t forgive it.”
It’s as if you had suspended your typical approach to reading and then something happened to remind you of that default approach, which in turn disallowed you to resume your suspension.
(I am reminded of an episode of the television show How I Met Your Mother in which the friends of the main character tell him about an annoying habit committed by the woman he is dating, a habit he has never noticed, but after they point it out he can’t stop noticing it until it becomes so overwhelming that it drives him crazy and he has to dump her.)
What a strange phenomenon.
Hey Justin,
I like your image: “It’s more like running a marathon than taking a nature hike.” that seems to resonate with Gene’s mention of Lutz’s notion of the page-hugger vs. the page-turner.
On a completely unrelated note, I started reading Bloom’s The Western Canon because I saw you mention it a while back. It’s my first taste of Bloom and I’d have to say I am surprised how much I’m liking it. (I’m in the Milton chapter right now.) Partly this is because I share his pro-aesthetics/anti-cultural studies approach, and partly it’s because he’s so damn passionate about what he likes. I dig that. Anyway, I appreciate the reccomendation, even though you didn’t know you were recommending it to me.
Hey Justin,
I like your image: “It’s more like running a marathon than taking a nature hike.” that seems to resonate with Gene’s mention of Lutz’s notion of the page-hugger vs. the page-turner.
On a completely unrelated note, I started reading Bloom’s The Western Canon because I saw you mention it a while back. It’s my first taste of Bloom and I’d have to say I am surprised how much I’m liking it. (I’m in the Milton chapter right now.) Partly this is because I share his pro-aesthetics/anti-cultural studies approach, and partly it’s because he’s so damn passionate about what he likes. I dig that. Anyway, I appreciate the reccomendation, even though you didn’t know you were recommending it to me.
If what we read didn’t matter, you’d probably read “Gravity’s Rainbow” and the Harry Potter book at the same speed. But I get your point. Maybe if you’d never heard of Harry Potter before, and someone told you it was written by Thomas Pynchon, you’d approach it with your “Pynchon mind” and read it more slowly and carefully.
My guess is that whatever you did, you would not be able to slow your HP experience down to the speed of your GR experience, because HP is composed of familiar, stock characters and imagery that we’ve all seen a million times before, in everything from Lord of the Rings to 1001 Arabian Nights to the Wizard of Oz. Very little is new or takes any time to wrap your mind around. So the only new (ish) thing is the plot, and you read quickly to get to the next plot point.
Pynchon, on the other hand, occasionally throws you things you just haven’t ever quite seen before. Or inside-out, backwards things you have to find your way into. Not the same at all.
You’re probably right that your expectations affect your reading speed, but I’m guessing the content has a much greater effect.
If what we read didn’t matter, you’d probably read “Gravity’s Rainbow” and the Harry Potter book at the same speed. But I get your point. Maybe if you’d never heard of Harry Potter before, and someone told you it was written by Thomas Pynchon, you’d approach it with your “Pynchon mind” and read it more slowly and carefully.
My guess is that whatever you did, you would not be able to slow your HP experience down to the speed of your GR experience, because HP is composed of familiar, stock characters and imagery that we’ve all seen a million times before, in everything from Lord of the Rings to 1001 Arabian Nights to the Wizard of Oz. Very little is new or takes any time to wrap your mind around. So the only new (ish) thing is the plot, and you read quickly to get to the next plot point.
Pynchon, on the other hand, occasionally throws you things you just haven’t ever quite seen before. Or inside-out, backwards things you have to find your way into. Not the same at all.
You’re probably right that your expectations affect your reading speed, but I’m guessing the content has a much greater effect.
My wife, the brilliant poet Kathryn T. S. Bass, likes to say that books teach you how to read them. I believe that. You learn, often by the end of the first page, something about the narrator, the density of description or the speed of the plot, something about the characters you’ll be following. All of this probably influences how you approach the text.
My wife, the brilliant poet Kathryn T. S. Bass, likes to say that books teach you how to read them. I believe that. You learn, often by the end of the first page, something about the narrator, the density of description or the speed of the plot, something about the characters you’ll be following. All of this probably influences how you approach the text.