Feb25
BTT: Why you read
Suggested by Janet:
I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ ‘The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age’:
“To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. And like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or one’s orientation toward it.”
To what extent does this describe you?
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*Edited to add: When I offered this question to BTT back in April, I hadn’t read the book. Since then I have read it; here is my review. This quotation is taken from the essay “The Woman in the Garden” (p. 80).
I asked the question, so it’s only fair that I should participate! Short answer: I don’t read to turn my back on my present circumstances, but I do read to enrich them; I do acknowledge an incompleteness in my experience. Here is a partial repost from April that reflects on this further:
My friend Mrs. Beaver quoted this reflection on reading. It’s quoted by Lauren Winner in Girl Meets God, in a section about her experience giving up reading for Lent one year. The speaker she quotes is Sven Birkerts:
To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. And like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or one’s orientation toward it.
My first reaction was that I didn’t like the idea of “positing an elsewhere and setting off for it.” But after some discussion with Mrs. Beaver, I agree with her that it’s really the part about how an imaginative voyage into a book is “a comment of sorts about the place one has left” that I take exception to.
I thought of a C.S. Lewis statement that reflects a perspective similar in some ways, different in others. It’s interesting to compare the two:
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
Both of them seem to agree that our private experience of life is incomplete, and books (among other things) can add to it. But reading isn’t always escapist. What I like about Lewis’s statement is that it captures something I love about reading: I’m always “confined” within my own mind and life, but virtually anything I read can “irrigate” how I experience it. Whatever I’m reading will be like a stained glass window that colors everything in my “room.” I’ll notice things I never would notice if I weren’t reading a given book at a given moment.
12 Comments »Bookish reflections
You started all this? Off with her head. LOL, Couldn’t come up with a less complicated question. This one made my head hurt. It’s your fault. Here’s Mine
That bad, huh? How unfortunate. I’m rather fond of my head…
I like the stained glass analogy.
I also read for enrichment, not to make “a comment of sorts about the place one has left.”
I enjoyed your question a lot. I don’t really have a problem with the “making a comment about the place left” part of the question myself, but I don’t think it is a negative quality to notice what one lacks (however much or little one appreciates what one has)as long as one seeks out the enrichment.
I agree! As I’ve read others’ responses today, I think increasingly that Birkerts is right. What we call enrichment can’t come if we’re already all “sufficient.”
Yes, reading does indeed enrich lives. My answer: http://www.rundpinne.com/2010/02/booking-through-thursday-why-i-read.html
great question, Janet.
here mine answer (short and sweet!)
http://blog.readinggroupchoices.com/content/blog/barbara/10/february/btt-225-reading-booksinsufficient-life
Definitely an interesting question! Here’s mine:
http://fictionfanatic.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/btt-why-you-read/
Very thoughtful answer and interesting quote. I don’t agree with the quote and actually had a hard time even finding it. I did find Birket’s The Elegies online (some of it) and read through it. Still didn’t find the quote itself but some very interesting reading. I’ll have to look into reading the book itself which I like your review of by the way. The quote is thought provoking to say the least. My response is up now. I sort of went off on a tangent.
http://www.mytwoblessings.com/2010/02/booking-through-thursday-why-you-read.html
[...] Booking Through Thursday – Why You Read And the meme this week is suggested by Janet: I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ ‘The Gutenberg [...]
I, too, think the Lewis quote is more accurate. I think the image of “irrigating deserts” acknowledges the trueness and necessity of our “real” lives, but also acknowledges the power and necessity of our read experiences. Thanks for providing a thoughtful and thought-provoking question!
Oh the question for the latest BTT is so hard Janet! I actually don’t understand how reading could be so complicated. But I’m kind of understanding a bit of what I’m reading – that was Birkert’s opinion and that I don’t quite agree with him when I agree with you that life is insufficient in the sense that I have more to see or learn.