Reading the Now Sullen and Sometimes Cynical Art

Everyday we should... read one good poem - Goethe

Lately I've come to terms that I don't read as much as I used to. When I was in high school, I never told anyone that during my afternoon spare, I walked home with the sole purpose of finishing a John Steinbeck or F.Scott Fitzgerald novel. I never told anyone about my secret past-time. No, I said I was going home to watch t.v. and sleep. I still remember how well that lie worked because during class, my art teacher chided me with the very lie I had concocted. For me, reading was part of my alter-ego and I existed in the Clark Kent disguise.  Reading was my private greater life and I kept it so. Sacred, simple, untouched, unhindered, beautiful and not once revealed to the prying eyes of others. 

Looking back, I could have told her my secret. No, I didn't sleep, I wasn't lazy enough to sit in front of the boob tube - no, instead, I devoured words and ruminated and felt alive, more alive that I did in school which for me was several hours of anxiety until two o'clock. And then a pensive walk home and then an hour with words.

Then I could read fifty pages in a sitting. I needed a break after those fifty pages. A half-hour, an hour and then back at it again.

Nowadays, it seems I read fifty pages in the morning and don't return to the book I am reading until the next day.

Maybe I'm cynical or tired or simply frustrated. I don't know. All of the above? Yes, perhaps, alright, that could be. Yet, I pick up a book more because it is habit and less that it feels like pleasure and discovery. When I was in my early teens, then late teens and early twenties, a book held out a complex snippet of the universe and greedily, like a child at a boring adult party, grasped for my delicious cookie and savoured it amidst the adult world where sobriety has been dulled away by quiet alcoholic buzzes. A book back then was the best friend, a partner in crime, a treat, a refuge, a longing briefly fulfilled.

Now a book is more like a chore and I hate this. Maybe I've come to the end of my reading or maybe I don't want to re-read. I know people who read and re-read their favourite books every year. A friend told me about a teacher who re-read In Search of Lost Time every summer, all seven volumes. Sure, I loved Proust and I know he had a wondrous influence on me but I don't feel compelled to revisit Swan or the Germantes or even Charlus again. Maybe in ten years times when everything else matter less or more, maybe then I'll return to the author of the cork-lined room and remember what he remembered all over again.

I wish I could return to certain books but the territory becomes familiar and familiarity sometimes, as the Anna Karenina, Vanity Fair, Mansfield Park, the Poetry of Hölderlin, House of the Dead, Nana, The Divine Comedy,  etc... I am more than willing to re-indulge because I don't know what else is out there.

saying goes, breeds or better yet, belies contempt. I have a list of books to re-read.

One might notice I'd rather be aroused by the classic and re-animate them with another reading. Yes, they are classics. I think more than anything I am cynical because there seems to be less good writing in books than years ago. All the good writers living are working for television and film. I feel this very much. If anything, there has been a reversal. The best seller list is drivel but turn on the t.v., watch AMC, HBO or FX and you'll find something literary and exciting.

I don't want to bother with modern writers. I've tried. I have and found few rewards. Yes, I read Julian Barnes latest (The Sense of an Ending) and read practically all of Tom Perotta (Little Children, Election, The Leftovers) and now I search for others.

But the mission is faltering. There's nothing quite, yes, nothing quite like Six Feet Under or Mad Men or Downton Abbey. If anything, I am reading the great British novelist Anthony Trollope basically because he inspired Jullian Fellowes (and Trollope is amazing and I'm happy but still... always the classics).

I could blame television or I could blame film or I could blame the MFA programs in university for coddling the lazy talent of academics. I tried reading The Tiger's Wife but found the first few pages lacking. I remember a scene where a man's arm is caught in the jaws of a tiger and all I kept thinking, if you work in a zoo and near a tiger cage, wouldn't you be more cautious? Details like this make me think the author had the right contacts and not a great ability to craft a believable tale.

And that's just it, the art of writing like the art of reading has fallen flat on its face. I pick up the odd literary journal and I don't have the patience for the latest pretentiousness. Some poet or story writer that is hackneyed and boring, who hasn't worked a day in their life, pushing a pen in their ivory tower, his or her view of the world blinded by a penchant for Marxism or Feminism.

But then it could be the audience. Technology hypnotizes and the latest gadget gobbles up time, a piece of China-made hardware, built by someone who tried to kill themselves but the nets outside the building caught them in the act. But yes, there it is, the pocket-sized distraction that isn't a piece of one's anatomy. What good are these devices, just mere tools of distractions, conveniences that are inconvenient, dumbing down buyers. I can't count the number of times I've been in a social situation where in the midst of mundane conversation, the people present pulled out their device and began to text. Why bother being with people if you feel this callous need to ignore them? Of course, these people are not reading. No, they're busy playing Angry Birds or tweeting the latest inane thought they've had. Instead of participating in something worthwhile, getting lost in literature, they are busy letting the rest of the world inhabit their mental space and everything out there, as I've happened to find is equally idiotic.

So reading, yes, is a lost, losing art. A book? What's that? A thing with paper and a covers? Don't judge a book by it's cover? How long will that phrase make sense?

Still, I don't know what to say or what has come over me. I long for a good book, something seminal and touching, emotional and philosophical. Instead, it's the same putrid chicken feed on the bestseller list. Always a cookbook, a diet book, a political-propaganda book in the non-fiction list along with something about 'heaven' or some Muslim woman surviving or embracing her culture. Turn to the fiction side and it's a host of plot-driven tomes - mysteries, actions, Dan Brown - with little depth and the same spurning need to turn the page because curiosity is a great motivator. You can write badly but if you've captured people's reptilian-brain interest, you've got them. Sex, death, corruption... fill in the blanks, add a few personalities and the New York Times will want you.

I'll return to my Trollope (an island of heaven in my skepticism) soon but in the meanwhile I sigh for my high school self, so eager and so much longing to live in that other world. High school didn't matter and I'm sure all my former adolescent peers are addicted to their Facebooks, posting pictures of their latest off-spring, talking about what they digested at last night's dinner or adding yet another funny picture of a kitten. Why is it in this world of technology, people devolve and not evolve? Now are the primitive times I think and reading is dying with the rise of the banal and mediocre. Distraction, not edification. Blindness and not awareness. As a whole, the Western world doesn't even have the wherewithal to see how ridiculous we are with our lives. Stupidity continues to win and the passive mind is rewarded. I love good television but when will good reading return and when it will be easier to find the book that will help me lose myself and still feel connected to the better aspect of the modern world?