Recommended today
Slow Reading in the Fast Age
By Mikikis
Yilin Publishing House 2021
The pace of modern society is getting faster and faster, and although browsing the Internet increases the breadth and speed with which we receive information, it endangers our concentration, reduces the quality of reading, and keeps us away from the joy of reading.
David Mikikis, a professor of literature at the University of Houston, perceives the ills of the fast age and advocates the use of slow reading to resist the fragmentation and entertainment of the fast, trying to re-establish the ancient connection between man and literature, concentration, and the joy of reading. Based on decades of experience in reading, commenting and teaching literature, he provides readers with fourteen reading rules and five reading demonstrations in five genres to help you get a more abundant and thorough reading experience.
Foreword to Slow Reading in The Fast Times
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Why should we read? Hundreds of millions of people around the world are illiterate, and only a tiny minority of literate people read regularly. Surfing the internet, browsing headlines, checking your email, not to mention watching TV and playing computer games can make it easy to pass the day (if you don't have to go to work, do housework, or chat with friends, family, and colleagues that day). None of the above behaviors are what I call reading. Browsing emails or text messages is fundamentally different from what I call reading behavior, which I'll describe in more detail below. Reading is a craft, a practice. My goal is to give you the tools you need so that you can become a better reader.
Better reading means slower reading. In recent years, a trend of slow living has been quietly circulating: slow cooking, slow thinking, and, yes, slow reading. Our world is computer-driven and the pace is breathtaking. In response to this fast pace, writers, when talking about social trends, began to advocate that we approach all aspects of life in a more contemplative and engaged way, including reading. Faster is not always better. Reading with the goal of obtaining information is not the same as slow, in-depth reading, which is read for pleasure and comprehension. Slow reading is rigorous and meticulous, and the pleasure we get from it is beyond imagination.
If you open this book, it is enough to show that you have loved to read, but often do not have time to read. Especially at the end of a busy day, reading tends to be a nod to flipping through the New Yorker instead of reading any of its articles; or browsing the news online and checking out social media sites. In this digital age, these pastimes are increasingly becoming a problem that we cannot extricate ourselves from, and slow reading is a good remedy for this problem.
My purpose is not to harass, trick, or even intimidate you into reading more books. On the contrary, I hope you will learn more from the books you read. If you're reading this book, it means you're hoping to get more out of reading; you have faith. And by improving your reading methods, you have the opportunity to put that belief into practice: you need to read more seriously, and of course more slowly.
How you read is far more important than how many books you read. And only good books can teach you how to read with all your heart, how to focus on them and reap the joy and knowledge. Newspapers, tweets, and blog posts can't show you what you read. Only books can do that.
If you want to reach a state of lingering, enjoying, and self-forgetfulness while reading, you need to do some preparation. In order to enjoy reading, you first need to know what to focus on when reading. This book introduces some simple rules and explores a few beloved books in depth to guide you to more happiness.
Once you learn to read slowly, you have a solid wealth that will constantly motivate you to move forward. Your attitudes and reactions to the world can change unexpectedly. I can't guarantee that slow reading will definitely turn you into a better person, make you make more money, or help you find true love. However, you will achieve more subtle changes, and your life will become more interesting as a result. Imagine that you never exercised before, but then became a standard athlete, running a few kilometers a day, just as exercise can change your body, and slow reading can change your mind: a new world will open; you will have completely different feelings and behaviors, because books will become more vivid and open for you.
Slow reading is a positive exercise. The more you put in, the more valuable and attractive it becomes. The more serious and positive you read, the more willing you are to re-read some of the books you've read, to re-understand and evaluate them, and to re-evaluate yourself. Walter Whitman writes, "Reading is not a half-asleep, half-awake act, but a rigorous physical exercise. ...... It's not that the book itself needs to be intact, it's that the reader of the book needs to do it. "Whitman believes that reading with high emotions and a serious attitude will make you a complete person, making you sound and strong.
In the 21st century, we face far greater difficulties in practicing the reading methods I recommend in this book. Like it or not, the Internet has revolutionized the way we read. People agree or approve or criticize technology, but they all agree that our relationship with the written word has changed forever. Even Internet enthusiasts often admit that they are frustrated with their Internet experience: they absent-mindedly waste hours of their time every day, but have only a handful of information in their hands and quickly forget it.
As long as you are interested, even if it is an Internet age, this book can still teach you how to be a careful good reader, a slow reader. The Internet nourishes casual reading: we browse quickly, taste it, and look for anecdotes. The Internet encourages us to consume text with a lazy attitude of taking small sips and taking small sips. However, slow reading requires time and practice. This book will guide readers to the new habits they need in order to gain more knowledge from books. The rewards for them will be enormous: centuries of knowledge, and the pleasure that can only be attained by focusing on reading.
For some overburdened and in a hurry, this book is a guide to proper reading. These people are exposed to "text" (emails, tweets, short online news) all the time, but crave a more rewarding reading experience, something that only slow reading can provide. This book is a slow-reading guide, or a manual, and I hope you will use it in a way that suits your needs. This book can also provide guidance for experienced readers who wish to improve their reading skills, as well as for those who are neglecting to practice. You may not have read a lot since you graduated from college, but you'll often eagerly glance at the shelves with novels that you've been exposed to in your favorite college courses. As you become more ambitious by practicing slow reading and travel to the off-the-beaten-track "Golden Kingdom" (to borrow a phrase from Keats), you can still rely on early reading as your home base, but also experience new pleasures. What opens up before you is an endless resource, always readily available: the thrill that comes with truly fulfilling reading. Later, my discussion was also useful for teachers and parents who recognized that the continued use of digital technology has negatively affected children's attention span and their ability to cope with challenges independently. Slow reading can help improve their concentration during and after class. This book offers pragmatic advice on how to enhance the curiosity and engagement of young readers.
In this book, I cite and discuss many examples, most of which come from literary works, but some from the fields of history and social sciences. Many of the examples are classic texts, but there are a few exceptions. What I focus on is the famous texts of the Western tradition from the Bible and Homer. I choose those books because they provide clues to the problems and possibilities of achieving deep reading, and because they give the reader so much esoteric and subtle pleasure, even if they are difficult to understand. I've been on a "Great Books" project that has been giving first-year college freshmen classes for years on end, and I know exactly how exciting it is to read classic texts.
Finally, I'll explain a little bit about the structure of the book's chapters. At the outset of this book, I will outline the immediate dangers of the digital age for serious readers. The discussion in the chapter "The Problem" at first glance does not seem to be related to the pragmatic advice I later offered on reading. In fact, recognizing this danger is of unparalleled importance: the Internet, while it has made many good changes, has made it harder than ever for us to engage in serious, slow, and effective reading. In the chapters "Where the Problem Is" and "The Solution" that follows, I dissect the true dimensions of the digital revolution, arguing that it has radically changed everything related to reading. Unless we think hard about how to control (and sometimes counteract) the growing impact of digital technology on our lives, we won't be able to achieve truly beneficial reading.
After "The Problem" and "The Solution," I'll move on to my 14 reading rules. Many readers are frustrated by the complexity of literature, especially when it is clearly difficult to understand. How often I hear this sentiment, and it is the exclamation of a well-read adult: "I just can't understand poetry!" The chapter provides a concrete plan for such readers. If you enjoy reading, but feel that the work you are reading should have more to know and talk about, then these rules will help you become a more capable and careful reader and help you understand how to read a book better. My 14 rules can be read in any order; each reader can find some rules that suit him or herself better, depending on the reader's own previous reading experience. Be free to adopt rules that you can use, that's how you make them work.
I hope that my emphasis on these rules does not hinder the reader's sense of pleasure. Ralph Waldo Emerson urged us to "read for the sake of interest," for the glittering, fleeting peaks that emerge from those books. I'm not going to flatten those peaks with my practical rules. Instead, I want to give you a way to find those peaks.
These rules are followed by five chapters on a more macroscopic experience of key genres, one on how to read short stories, novels, poems, plays, and essays, followed by a conclusion. These chapters provide readers with the opportunity to practice the 14 reading rules, which I often touch upon when discussing a wide variety of authors. In these chapters, I guide readers to read with me some of my favorite books that help us understand more clearly what reading is and lead us to other books of our kind. The books I have listed are typical examples of the genres to which they belong, and they are well represented by novels, poems, and other genres. In an important sense, essays are Montaigne, and drama is Shakespeare. If you have not yet read the books I have talked about, I hope that you will make up your mind to read them: they are vast and cover the entire literary world, from Chekhov's comedies with a melancholy background and human concern, to Henry James's sharp and self-deceptive clear words; from the noble spirit of Shakespeare's tragedy to the pure air exhaled by Vera Kaiser; from Wallace Stevens, who combines passion and restraint, to Beckett, who exposes pain unabashedly. In choosing these works, I have relied on my personal preferences, somewhat biased and arbitrary, and I have had to skip many writers whom I cherish so much: to discuss all the books I love would mean writing ten books, not just one. But I've made the start, and I hope I'm providing an example that will help you understand how to talk about your favorite books.
The great English Romantic literary critic William Hazrit advocated a passion for reading. There is a desire to read before there is good reading. My first piece of advice to you is always, keep your passionate desire for written words and keep your sense of pleasure. Reading should not be a chore, nor should it be a simple escape from the world, but a form of life on a higher level. Harold Bloom insists that reading correctly will give you more life: more characters than you can touch on a daily basis, and far more love and hate, intense happiness and sorrow than you may experience yourself. The worlds created by those great writers are comparable to the worlds created by God, with the same drastic changes, as beautiful and dark as the ones, and as new as the novelty that we admire. Through the infinite energy of words, this man-made world will bring you surprises, and surprises are valuable gifts. And the world is always open to you, all the time. Books are always waiting for you.