Many discussions about literacy focus on its practical benefits: on the power to develop critical thinking, to pursue knowledge, to seize and to refine those random, scattered notions that flit across awareness and then vanish. All of these points matter, but one detail often missed remains, for me, central: that reading is a source of pleasure.
I often come across a complaint from students: Why bother to read a full text, when a summary in bullet form (often supplied by Artificial Idiot) can provide all of the "information" of a text without the "distractions" of skill and form and art? This takes utilitarianism to absurd lows, but the point is worth considering. Why bother to read?
My answer is that reading, in itself, can be a joy.
Let me offer a few passages from a lifetime's library of pleasure. Please read them aloud; please hear them.
"In vain do individuals hope for Immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the Moon: Men have been deceived even in their flatteries above the Sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various Cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osyris in the Dogge-starre. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we finde they are but like the Earth; Durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts: whereof beside Comets and new Stars, perspectives begin to tell tales. And the spots that wander about the Sun, with Phaeton's favour, would make clear conviction.
"...Man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equall lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature.
"Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus, but the wisedom of funerall Laws found the folly of prodigall blazes, and reduced undoing fires, unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an Urne."
-- From HYDRIOTAPHIA, by Thomas Browne, 1658.
Sound and sense in combination can provide an intensely aesthetic pleasure, but even I, agnostic and anti-spiritual, can feel Browne's belief through the intensity of his language.
Another example from Thomas Browne, this one more "down to Earth." Again, please read this aloud.
"Whether lampries have nine eyes, as is received, we durst refer it unto Polyphemus, who had but one, to judge it. An error concerning eyes, occasioned by the error of eyes; deduced from the appearance of diverse cavities or holes on either side, which some call eyes that carelessly behold them; and is not only refutable by experience, but also repugnant unto reason. For, beside the monstrosity they fasten unto nature, in contriving many eyes, who hath made but two unto any animal, that is, one of each side, according to the division of the brain; it were a superfluous inartificial act to place and settle so many in one plane; for the two extremes would sufficiently perform the office of sight without the help of the intermediate eyes, and behold as much as all seven joined together. For the visible base of the object would be defined by these two; and the middle eyes, although they behold the same thing, yet could they not behold so much thereof as these; so were it no advantage unto man to have a third eye between those two he hath already; and the fiction of Argus seems more reasonable than this; for though he had many eyes, yet were they placed in circumference and positions of advantage, and so are they placed in several lines in spiders."
-- From PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA (Third Book), by Thomas Browne, 1646-1672.
This is natural history, close observation, skeptical inquiry, fuelled by a wit that no reduction to point form could preserve.
Another example. By all means, read this one aloud!
"But the third sister, who is also the youngest --! Hush, whisper whilst we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybèle, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum -- Our Lady of Darkness."
-- From SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS, by Thomas de Quincey, 1845.
De Quincey moves beyond the natural history and anthropology of Browne into the worlds of imagination, dreams, and dreads, but he relies no less on striking images and organ chords.
A final example.
"A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides --
You may have met Him -- Did you not
His notice sudden is --"The Grass divides as with a Comb,
A spotted shaft is seen,
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on --"He likes a Boggy Acre --
A Floor too cool for Corn --
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot --
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone --"Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me --
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality --"But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone --"-- Emily Dickinson, ca 1865.
The power, the beauty of great prose and great poetry is that it cannot be paraphrased; it must be read as it is, in full, because its impact relies as much on sound and metaphor, imagery and rhythm, as on what it "says."
Any student of today who prefers bullet form summaries to the joys of reading might be dissuaded by examples like these. It is the task of literate people, who love to read, to show what can be gained by reading for pleasure.
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