'An Important Part of Anyone’s Reading'

A variation on the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages Strategy” – “How do you do it?” – is the one I get when a workman or friend visits my home office where most of my books are shelved: “You read all these?” I can reply with one of three answers: 1.) “Yes,” which isn’t quite true. 2.) “No,” which is true but misleading 3.) “Some of them are new – like Richard J. Evans’ Hitler’s People -- and I haven’t had time to read them yet,” which is true but probably tedious, and my questioner may feel obligated by courtesy to ask for specifics while not really caring what I have read or not. Usually, depending on the seriousness of the questioner, I’ll fudge it and say, “Most of them,” and that ends the discussion. 

For those of us who watch little television, never play video games, don’t watch or participate in sports, have jobs readily accomplished in eight hours, five days a week, are not undergoing heavy-duty chemotherapy, use their smartphone as a tool not a toy, and remain fairly lucid, a hundred pages a day is reasonable, not worth bragging about. That Walther’s practice could readily turn into another excuse for competition and showing off, is obvious, but that’s not his way. Practices ancillary to actually reading a book – keeping lists of books read, joining reading groups, speed reading – are alien to me and, I suspect, to Walther. I've never used a Kindle or other e-reader and I’ve listened to only one audio book in my life – Stanley Elkin’s The Living End – during a long drive and at the urging of a friend. I prefer music.

 

“[O]ne hundred pages is not meant to be a precise scientific metric,” he writes, “it is simply a goal, and, I think, a manageably sized one.” Of course, some of us have been actively, enthusiastically reading since childhood. To do otherwise would make life feel most peculiar. A hundred pages a day is a good, focused walk in the woods, not a marathon. I’ll note that I read fiction faster, with fewer pauses, than history, criticism or biography.

 

Several times I’ve served on search committees screening applicants for jobs at the university. My final question is always the same -- “What are you reading?” – and I have never received a simple, unadorned “nothing.” Not one had been reading anything but all clearly felt guilty about it or at least ashamed to admit they lead bookless lives. One of Walther’s most interesting insights is parenthetical: “(Those who find other ways to spend their leisure time are free to do so, though I have a hard time taking seriously the idea of people who write or edit for a living but do not consider daily reading of books within the sphere of their chosen profession)” – a reality I’ve often observed. A related observation: most people at universities, both faculty and students, don’t read, regardless of department or discipline.

 

Walther’s “rules” for reading – more like habits, natural customs or superstitions -- are strikingly like my own:

 

“Like many people, I generally read more than one book at a time, but—this is crucial—never more than one book of the same kind. By this I mean that if I have one fairly heavy book going—say Heidegger on Anaximander and Parmenides—I try to ensure that the others are all at least comparatively lighter (the second volume of Ronald Hutton’s life of Cromwell, for example). This is not, of course, always possible; while researching my biography of Newman, I have often found myself working through one or more dry-as-dust biographies of mid-Victorian clergymen. When this happens, I try to balance it out by reading something very light—e.g., Wodehouse, or a crime novel.”

 

Unlike Walther, I don’t read much in the morning. It’s simply not convenient and I like to write, under the influence of coffee, in the morning, but that might change with my approaching retirement. Most reading I do in the evening and occasionally well into the night. I like the sensation of reading alone, under one light, after my wife has gone to bed. Again, this is custom, what comes naturally. I read books I’m reviewing more slowly than books read on a whim, though these categories are easily blurred. Another practice I  share with Walther: “It should go without saying that one must never go anywhere without bringing a book.” And yet another: “Returning to one’s favorite books is an important part of anyone’s reading—perhaps the most important.” Thus, almost annual rereadings of Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels and The Pilgrim’s Progress. It’s important to stress that Walther is not an obsessive-compulsive when it comes to reading (and neither am I):

 

“[T]he resolution is more important than the result. If one hundred pages sounds like or proves to be too many, aim smaller. Fifty pages a day allows you to get through something like fifty books a year, which is more than four times the ostensible average in this country. Even a goal of twenty pages—a page and a half per hour, assuming average sleeping habits—would allow you to read David Copperfield in little more than a month; it is also humble enough that if kept to long enough to become an actual habit it will almost certainly be exceeded at least half of the time.”

 

When I was young I was both proud and ashamed of the quantity of reading I did. Ours was an almost bookless house and I still remember the names of two girls in grade school – Terry Mandel and Beth Ann Daniels – who loved reading the way I did, on a semi-industrial scale. Now I give little thought to what others think of me. I’m aware of Walther’s realization – “The subject lends itself effortlessly to self-aggrandizement and accusations of dishonesty” – but how many people in today’ world are impressed by what I read?