A reader asks, “How did you learn to read so fast?” The answer is simple: I didn’t. I have always read slowly, often taking notes, which makes it even slower. This frustrated me when I was young, and I briefly contemplated enrolling in one of Evelyn Wood’s “speed-reading” courses. But reading for me has always been a deeply private and focused activity, and I don’t like it messed with. I’ve always been good at concentrating. I slip into a movie or book easily, and I’ve come to think of it as entering a sort of fugue state. It’s a pleasant immersion and blocks most distractions, and I’m not in competition with anyone, even myself. It’s not a race.
If a book is good, why
would I want to read it quickly? Wouldn’t I want to linger and prolong my pleasure? Imagine reading poetry quickly. That would be unfair
to me and the author, assuming the poet was any good.
Barton Swaim published a
column in the Times Literary Supplment on June 27, 2014, in which he describes
his own experience with slow reading. Swaim is an editorial page writer for The
Wall Street Journal and one of the best in the business. He is erudite,
well-read and a graceful writer. I recommend his book The Speechwriter
(2015). He writes:
“The source of my
impatience is slow reading. I just cannot read as fast as other people do. I
was deeply self-conscious about it as a child. In school, I would have to read
aloud in class and would halt over almost every word. ‘There are--more--things
in--heaven and earth--Hora--Horat--Horatio.’ On aptitude tests, I would do well
on the problems I answered, but I wouldn't answer many because it took me too
long to read the questions.”
Swaim became a book
reviewer, which would seem to be a risky way to earn a living for a slow reader.
His way of dealing with it sounds familiar:
“The only thing to do was
to read during every possible free moment. There weren’t many of those--I had a
hectic job as a politician’s speech-writer at the time, and three young
children at home. There were late nights and early mornings, and I always had a
book any time I thought I'd have to wait for anything--the doctor’s office, the
car line at my daughter’s school. But I had to take it far beyond that. I'd get
a paragraph in waiting for a traffic light, and another while waiting in line
at the post office. The half-hour I was allotted for lunch was strictly for
reading, and on car trips I would get my wife to read aloud while I drove.”
Swaim adopted a practice I’ve
seldom resorted to – reading while walking. There’s an added risk in my case –
I use a cane. Holding it in my right hand and a book in my left would make me worryingly unsteady. I remain a sedentary reader.
To my reader who asked
about fast or slow reading: slow works for me. It has never imperiled the
pleasure I’ve always taken in good books.
3 comments:
Why would anyone want to read a good book quickly? That, it seems to me, sucks all the pleasure out of it, which is the reason we read in the first place. Because of a few near accidents, I have given up reading at red lights while driving. And I would likely do a face plant if I attempted to read while walking. I like to make a game out of wedging in reading snacks during the day. Of course, some of the best opportunities for reading are hold times on the telephone or waiting in medical settings.
A fellow I worked with said that he had been in the habit of reading while walking. Then one day at college he found himself stopped abruptly, having managed a few strides with one foot each side of a guy wire. This did not stop his reading while walking; getting home and discovering that a girl from his town had seen it and told everyone did.
Henry James adopted the slow-chewing dietary fad of "Fletcherism" in a doomed effort to scale back his avoirdupois. Which sounds agonizing to me. I'm not a lightning-fast eater but chewing every morsel down to its atomic components sounds like a surefire way to eliminate the enjoyment of a meal. At any rate, the Fletcher approach seems better applied to reading. The difficulty is that there is simply so much great stuff to read. And so little time!
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