I often find myself in an awkward state of affairs. Moments ago I was sitting on my lounge chair, awash in January light, reading an autobiography. The book in question was Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, a fantastic volume that features the author’s fastidious attention to language and detail. His style is incredible, and I enjoy it immensely, but I could not concentrate. I tried to read the paragraph, over and over again, but it was as though my brain had been suddenly stuffed with cotton wool. All I could think was: how many books will I read this month? Which film will I watch tonight? What show am I going to continue? And so on and so forth, until all my mind had to offer for the words on the page was a question of what they would offer in the way of consumption.
The more I think about it, the more I find it a horrific way to look at art. Films, books, albums, and television alike are reduced to a number, perhaps a status symbol. Look at how well i can apply myself to these difficult texts of my own volition. Admire at my time management skills, my attention span, my ability to maintain my academic standing while doing all of this. When I define art by my ability to consume it (as though it is a slab of meat), I remove both the art and myself from the equation. Girl + work = profit. The conversation I have with the author while I read is cursory, cheapened by the mathematics in the back of my head.
My father often tells me that he thinks I enjoy my self-destructive behaviors because I refuse to change them. I posit that altering the way you think about things, especially if you’ve had a lot of practice doing it the wrong way, is easier said than done. Last year I spent quite a bit of time stressed beyond belief at how little I was supposedly reading. (The average number of books a person reads per year is twelve, but this number is inflated by avid readers. The mode for this set of data is four.) I read almost two hundred books last year. When I scroll through a Goodreads feed of numerical goals, page counts, and congratulatory comments, I can’t help but think I’m not alone in my anxieties. The commodification of literature is everywhere: readers who do it for the sake of finishing a book, not because they want to enrich themselves.
Perhaps in a busy world driven by the bite-size appeal of social media, I ask for too much by suggesting that we divorce ourselves from what I term a meat slab mentality. There is little I can do to influence the adult who prides themselves on rushing through hundreds of young adult fiction tomes per year. Indeed, it seems irrelevant to me to try and change the world with one small piece of writing. What I want to suggest, then, is a way to reframe this viewpoint for myself, and maybe for you, if you feel the uncanny tingle of recognition. The two of us ought to change ourselves before we begin proselytizing to others.
Here is an experiment. Put your phone in your drawer, your laptop in another room, and find an unread book to curl up with. I’m sure you have one. Don’t check how many pages are in the book. Don’t check the time—turn any clocks in the room to the wall. (I do not recommend doing this if you have an imminent meeting, and cannot be held liable for the concern of friends who assume you are in grave danger because you’re not responding to their texts.) Open the book and read. If you’ve gone for a while (remember, this is gauged by your internal clock, the marker of ten minutes is going to lead to you checking the time every thirty seconds) and you despise the novel, try another book. Stop when you like, and come back to it later. Repeat the process. It doesn’t matter if you finish the book or not. What are you getting from it? What is it teaching you? Is there a sentence that makes you gasp privately, touch a pencil to the page but not write for fear of muddying the author’s intent? I have had this at least three times with Speak, Memory, and all I can think of is how long it will take me to finish.
Oh, and here’s another thing. Reading is a bit like meditating. Don’t let yourself think about anything else. If you should be distracted from the book at hand (for instance the story reminds you of a personal experience and now you’re wondering what the population of Serbia was in 1857), take a deep breath, reread the last paragraph you remember, and keep going. It is not an easy thing to escape the way you have trained and reinforced your mind to behave, but I believe it is a renewing thing to divorce yourself from the mindset of consumption.
Speak, remember. There is more to art than its numbers.