“When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it” - English author Julian Patrick Barnes
Why leisure reading?
We have evolved from reptilian to mammalian to higher order brain/ minds which include the ability to use language, symbols, metaphor – and to read. But readers of printed leisure books have almost become an endangered species with the advent of the digital world and television. And in any case, why read for pleasure or for learning? What is the answer to Zorba the Greeks exasperated outburst to Basil 'You don’t know! Well, all those damned books you read - what good are they? Why do you read them?' (Kazantzakis, N. 1961)
Any answers?
How about, ‘Because you’ll live longer!’
I kid you not. Dr Chris Drew points to research findings that retired people who read books between 1 and 3½ hours a week are 17% less likely to die in the coming 12 years than those who don’t read. And those that read more than 3½ hours every week improve their probability rate to 23%, irrespective of social and economic status, gender, state of mind, ethnicity, education, marital status … If nothing else, this gives you more time to read!
(At the time the research was conducted, there was no coronavirus threat)
There are of course a number of physical, emotional, cognitive, social conversational and spiritual benefits. “Reading spiritual texts can lower blood pressure and bring about an immense sense of calm …” (Winter-Hebert, l (2016)
Neil Gaiman has some compelling evidence for reading: “Once in New York, I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons - a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth — how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, fifteen years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based about asking what percentage of ten- and eleven-year-olds couldn’t read. And certainly couldn’t read for pleasure”. (Gaiman, N. 2016)
What should you read?
Firstly, I have no judgement on what you read nor the comprehension level of what you read – comic book to literary classic, prose and poetry. All have value - and generally simple trumps complicated (that’s why the ‘fog index’ was designed - to measure readability).
I am cynical about a lot of self-help and business-advice books on the market. My inbuilt bias tells me that a lot of what is available is vanity-publishing written by arrogant, somewhat narcissistic authors, ‘This is what I did and it made me rich. I have the answer to achieving success. You too can do this by following my easy 7-step recipe’. They find a ready, gullible market. In the business world I come across many who anxiously read what they feel they must so as not to be left behind. This becomes a treadmill in our information-overload world.
So my opinion is that it’s good to escape from too much self-help and business reading, and to read simply for enjoyment. (Not that they are inherently bad to read! Rumi: “You will learn by reading … But ... you will understand with LOVE.”
I have found that in fiction there is much, often-unexpected, wisdom. Here we find both the benevolent and malevolent. Novels provide incidental learning. Lynette and I are both avid readers of detective novels. Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct mysteries are great for studying probing questioning techniques. Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch investigations offer real insight into burnout, coping mechanisms and relationships. David Gutersen’s Snow Falling on Cedars offers a clear look at the nature of prejudice. Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides teaches us a lot about assertive communication. Karen Connelly's Touch the Dragon illustrates the complexities of different cultures really well. Gordon Steven's Kennedy's Ghost provides a fascinating glimpse of a client-consultant relationship, Trina Paulus’ Hope for the Flowers speaks volumes about competitive and uncollaborative workplaces, Suzanne Glass's The Interpreter illustrates the challenges of attentive listening, and Jim Crace's Quarantine is a wonderful exploration of relationships and values at a number of different levels. One can't but be impressed by the job competence of Kathy Reichs's Dr Temperence Brennan, the forensic anthropologist in Death Du Jour. Gary Paulsen's Winterdance speaks to and explains driving passions and experiential learning, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink offers insight into the masks that we wear, reconciliation and atonement, Geoff Dyer's great book about jazz, But Beautiful, paints a brilliant picture of the downside of total, addictive focus, high creativity and radical transformation on the involved individuals …
Here is one of a number of sources you will find on line: https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals/free-kindle-books
(If you are lucky enough to belong to the New York public library you can access and download 300, 000 free ebooks!)
What happens when you read?
Books transport us to different worlds. The whole person is affected, most obviously cognitively and emotionally. David Hutchens: “This emotional experience also has the effect of lifting the audience out of the present and putting them in a different shared experience that Graham Williams describes as “narrative transport.” This is a powerful effect, and at its best it bears similarity to a trance or hypnotic state. Graham says he recalls watching the movie The Elephant Man in a theater and being unexpectedly seized with sobs that he could not control. “At some level I had entered the story,” he says. “Perhaps I identified with Joseph Merrick’s ugly duckling situation. I certainly experienced overwhelming empathy with him, and anger at what society can do to individuals”. (Hutchens, D. 2015)
Narrative helps us touch the essence of ‘self’, glimpse the meaning of meaning, have a look at being rather than at doing. (Especially when we are contrained by lockdown). As we read we are exposed to the gamut of human tragedy and ecstasy, and an associated multiplicity of thoughts and emotions, wisdom from the ancients to the modern – which give us the opportunity to build knowledge and have insight.
Neil Gaiman explains how book reading promotes being other-oriented and empathic: “When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world, and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed".
"Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals”. (Gaiman, N. 2016)
This sentiment, and its importance during these testing times, is highlighted by Patricia Manney. In her seminal work, the former Chair of the World Transhumanist Association Board of Directors argues that storytelling is the key to empathy creation, more so as the Fourth Industrial Revolution proceeds. The increasing importance of empathy directly correlates with the rate of transhuman technological acceleration. And when empathy is absent, conflict occurs (Walls are erected). “Its lack can be found all around us, be it in our wars, crime, inequality, anti-social behavior …. And the myopic behavior of the ‘me generation’”. (Manney, PJ. 2008).
Research has shown that “... exposure to fictional text is strongly related to social ability and empathy, though non-fiction doesn't appear to have the same effect”. (Vitelli, R. 2015)
The written word has enabled readers to imagine, and identify and feel – to see through the character’s eyes, empathise. “Storytelling is both the seductive siren and the safe haven that encourages the connection with the feared ‘other’” – across countries, cultures, and vastly different experiences. Manney cites Pulitzer prize winner, Jane Smiley’s case that novel reading “creates a generally empathetic personality in the (habitual) reader”, and “is integral to the liberalization of different cultures”. Smiley traced historical links between important novels and resulting societal change and evolution. (Smiley, J. 2005)
Should our immersion in the use of information and communications technology reduce our novel-reading time, this carries the danger, broadly speaking, of simultaneously reducing our capacity to empathize. To the contrary, the way that social media is used – if this points us towards an even more invasive transhuman technological world, narcissistic communication and behaviour is set to grow. Manning, cites Woodard: “There is a belief among some academics and storytellers that the non-visual story has a deeper psychological impact than the visual story, since the non-visual relies on each mind using its personal experience to build its imagination, making it a more intimate, relatable ‘vision’ with a greater impact on one’s empathy”. (Woodard, J. 2002)
(This should not diminish in our minds the power of imagery to touch us deeply at the emotional level. Nor does it obviate the potentially positive use of technology to encourage the development of empathy. And to the extent that empathy is a values-based phenomenon, as long as our values remain intact, empathetic responses should remain a part of our ‘DNA’).
Manning also shares Paul Saffo’s important questions: “… Will we have empathy for those who we are not connected to by our Wi-Fi? Can we feel as much for the hi-tech have-nots if we don’t hear their stories?” (Saffo, P.2005)
Serious stuff. We should never underestimate the fun that reading can bring. A favourite booklet I return to often for a belly-laugh session is Roald Dahl’s The Vicar of Nibbleswicke, a story of a vicar with back-to-front dyslexia. And friend Ralph Windle, who passed away last year, regaled me with his Bertie Ramsbottom poems, using humour to convey very important insights. (At Oxford, Ralph read the greats (classics, philosophy, history); was one time CEO of Nabisco, UK). His The Poetry of Business Life should be mandatory reading for all business leaders. (Windle, R. 1994)
Reading stimulates the imagination. Einstein believed that imagination was more important than knowledge. And Tarnas says that “The human imagination is itself part of the world’s intrinsic truth; without it the world is in some sense incomplete”. (Tarnas, R. 1991) He goes on. “The relatively new development in man’s thinking of that dynamic mental capacity known as imagination, allows us to see hidden truth in myths and archetypal meaning, and make conscious our place in the universe, indeed broaden our concept of reality".
So reading allows us to go wide, deep and high. To experience revelation beyond our own limited school of life. (It is a fine line between imagination and ‘reality’).
The heroine of The Man from Beijing, when experiencing high blood pressure problems, is advised, “look after your roses and come back when you are healthy again”. She replies: “I don’t grow roses”. Her adviser continues: “that’s what my grandmother used to say. She thought you should concentrate on growing your imaginary roses”. (Mankell, H. 2010)
My friend Brother Richard Maidwell, who has as a purpose in life to write icons, taught me about 'reading' icons – and icon gazing. Icons, as is the case with other works of art, can act as sources of personal insight, grace, enlightenment and merit. How we can move beyond analysis, interpretation and appreciation to the practice of icon gazing – and let them ‘speak to us’, and find personal meaning and a sense of purpose and direction through these mind- informing images. On this question of reading imagery, another friend, Jan Taal, who is an Amsterdam psychologist and founder of Imaginatie, writes, “Imagery is (at) the very core of human existence. It is the central arena of our being where identity and reality are formed. There are three levels of mastery in imagery. At the first level we get to know our images and start to realize how they influence our existence. At the second we learn how to navigate and cope with our images, resulting in development and transformation of ourselves. This is the level of therapeutic work and personal growth. Ultimately in the third level we may realize to be (or become) the very source of All of it, the mysterious Greater (or Higher) Self”. (Taal, J. 2020)
What about difficulties that inhibit our reading aspirations?
It has been documented that our ability to concentrate on a single task, has declined in the internet age. Attention spans seem to be on the wane. The strong temptation for writers is to write pithy, attention-grabbing pieces. I think though that the advent of the coronavirus, forced time at home, the inadvisability of visiting public libraries now (and perhaps also public bookstores) may encourage the reading habit again. A trend to longer articles. Meaty books. So, why not the formation of on line book club circles? (Old habits die hard and personally I love and prefer the feel, look, smell and mystique of a ‘real’ book, but in these times on line makes more sense, using Zoom meetings for our book circles)
But there are no real difficulties other than self-discipline, perseverance. The idea is to enjoy, whether you read one page or many pages at a time.
A re-emergence of a reading population will be good for us in many ways. And probably lead to more reflection and reflective writing, deeper conversations, widening of personal horizons, and sheer leisure pleasure.
References
Drew, Chris, PhD (2020) 45 Facts on The Importance of Reading Books The Helpful Professor
https://helpfulprofessor.com/importance-of-reading-books/ citing Bavishi, Avni; Slade, Martin D and Levy, Becca R A chapter a day: Association of book reading with longevity Elsevier Social Science and Medicine Vol. 164, September 2016, pages 44-48
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953616303689?via%3Dihub
Gaiman, Neil (2016) Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming – an essay in The View from the Cheap Seats Deckle Edge
Hutchens, David (2015) Circle of the 9 Muses John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Kazantzakis, Nikos (1961) Zorba the Greek Faber & Faber Ltd., London
Mankell,Henning (2010) The Man from Beijing Harvill Secker, London
Manning, Patricia J (2008) Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the Key to Empathy Journal of Evolution and Technology, Volume 19, Issue 1, September 2008 (Published by the Institute of Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Saffo, P (2005) Farewell information, it’s the media age http://www.saffo.com/essays.essay_farewellinfo.pdf
Smiley, J (2005) Thirteen ways of looking at the novel Random House, NY
Taal, Jan (2017) The 3 Levels of Imagery European Institute for Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy 18th January, 2017
https://psychosynthesis.net/10774-2/ and http://www.imaginatie.nl/pdf_docs/Imagery.pdf
Tarnas,Richard (1991) Passion of the Western Mind Pimlico
Vitelli, Romeo PhD (2015) Being a book lover Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/media-spotlight/201504/being-book-lover
Williams, Graham (2000) Centre-ing Customer Satisfaction: the guide to breakthrough performance through internalising a customer satisfaction culture and practices Centre-ing Services
Windle, Ralph (1994) The Poetry of Business Life Berrett-Koehler, USA
Winter-Hebert, Lana (2016) 10 Benefits of Reading: Why You Should Read Every Day Capcana 18th August, 2016 .
http://capcana.com/news/10-benefits-of-reading-why-you-should-read-every-day/
Woodard, J (2002) Storytelling: past-present-future
http:www.storyteller.net/articles/7
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