'Like That Magician's Egg'

“The futurists claim that the book as we know it will disappear, like that magician’s egg, and that it will be replaced by ‘electronic data retrieval’ through our home computers. But I doubt that this will happen, at least to the extent predicted, because reading, as we know it, the eyes fastening on the printed page, is a sensual experience.” 

The latest grim-minded doomsayer? Countered by an old-fashioned romantic humanist? Sorry, no. This is Al Silverman (1926-2019), a sportswriter and CEO and chairman of the Book of the Month Club from 1972 to 1988. He’s writing in the Winter 1983 issue of the journal Dedalus, an issue titled “Reading: Old and New.” Silverman’s piece is titled “The Fragile Pleasure.” He goes on to quote Rilke, often a bad sign, though cynics will assure us Silverman is a charter member of the middlebrow majority.

 

The general tone of the contributors might be characterized as teeth-gritting optimism. No one wants to come out and say the United States is in danger of becoming a nation of aliterates and illiterates. This was long before smart phones, social media, contemporary English departments, the usual suspects. “Of course,” Silverman says, “no one needs a Gallup poll to know that we are not a nation of readers.” I joined the Book of the Month Club in junior-high school and bought such books as James Jones’ From Here to Eternity and Henri Troyat’s biography of Tolstoy.

 

My thinking is: individuals can change. The masses, never, or at such a glacial pace the change is discernable only retrospectively. I’ve never told people what to read. The best I can do is share my experience of reading good books. Preaching doesn’t work and is often presumptuous. My sons read, at least is part, because they have always seen us reading. Silverman takes an autobiographical approach:

 

“The reading experience was activated by people who cared -- in my case, my mother, my aunt, my third-grade teacher. Later, it was the writer -- certain writers -- who changed my perception of life. I was lucky in any case. The encouragement of reading in this country, which should be an urgent priority from the beginning of education, is mostly missing today. And so a small, elite corps of readers develops in this country, and the rest -- the illiterates, the aliterates -- get away from us, and are lost forever.”

 

I received no reading encouragement from family but I have often acted on the principle of contrariety – do the opposite of what those around you are doing (precisely the reason I have never smoked a cigarette.) Several teachers along the way encouraged reading, and by high school I was able to recommend titles (Nathanael West, I remember) to some of my teachers. Silverman was obviously an intelligent, thoughtful  guy who is torn in contradictory directions. Here is his conclusion:

 

“Readers, just like books, grow from strange soil, soil that sometimes is totally without nutrients. But something happens. The seed takes root. There is growth, and, once in a while, a small harvest. Even in this land of plenty, the fragile and enduring pleasure lives.”