Last week, while thinking about the future of publishing, I touched on fundamental questions about the continuing importance of reading. I mentioned that I’m a bit baffled by just how much video has come to dominate over audio and written content, which I personally tend to prefer. To a certain extent I have to accept that things have moved on since my adolescence in the early 2000s, when most online content was (by necessity) written, and podcasts were a new and exciting alternative to broadcast radio. Nevertheless, the death of the written word has been forecast for a very long time, through a number of technological revolutions, and yet it persists. I thought it might be valuable to reflect on why that is.
I’m a big believer in questioning our underlying assumptions (in this instance, that reading is good), not necessarily to be contrarian and revisionist, but because it is worth understanding why we are doing things the way we do. So, here are the four reasons why I think reading (and by extension, the medium of text) is so great:
Intimacy
I wonder what I sound like to you as you read this. Perhaps you are someone who has met me at some point and have at least a general sense of what my voice sounds like. Perhaps you have never met me but know enough about me to imagine what I — an Englishman who grew up in Oxfordshire and spent most of my adult years in Southeast Asia — am likely to sound like. Perhaps for whatever reason you imagine me sounding completely different than I actually do, or perhaps you just read my words in your own voice.
However you choose to imagine my voice as you read this, there is an inherent closeness to it. My words are being mediated by you and consequently they are closer to your own thoughts than if you were listening to me read this, or watching a video of me saying it.
In general, I believe this proximity — even intimacy — is quite a powerful thing. It can be dangerous in the wrong hands, written propaganda can be all the more convincing because it comes across as more reasonable, in part because we tend to hear it in our own voice unless we consciously opt not to. But used for benign purposes, it allows us as readers to feel that we are truly engaging with what a writer is saying. It transposes their thoughts into our brains, even though we are aware that they are not ours.
This is especially thrilling across time and space. My ability to read languages besides modern English is pretty limited, but even so I can read many great authors and feel as though these titans of literature, philosophy or science are talking directly to me. Reading Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Bertrand Russell, Austen, Wilde, Swift, the Brontës, or Orwell the distance of time between us disappears. Their ideas, characters and images are alive in me while I read.
Other media have different strengths in this regard, but where audio or video can be affected by extraneous elements — perhaps we find a particular voice annoying, or someone’s looks distracting — reading generally is not.
Clarity
There is something intrinsically black and white about reading. The text says what it says. There may be ambiguity, multiple possible interpretations, it might be ironic, or deliberately elliptical, but it says the words it says. We can argue about the intended meaning, or look for our own meanings in a text, but we do so rooted in the precise words used in the text. Moreover because it is written down, it is easy to navigate — to turn back the page to check something, or lookup a reference, or compare side by side with another source.
Not all of these things are impossible with other media, of course, but they do tend to be more complicated. If you want to analyse something that was said on a podcast or a video in depth, there’s a good chance you’re going to want to refer to a transcript. And of course that won’t include all of the non-verbal elements, tones of voice, graphics, visual cues and so on. Now those elements may be transmitting information that text alone can’t, but the more linear nature of written text permits a greater degree of clarity.
Flexibility
Written text is enormously flexible and adaptable. A book or print journal can easily be carried with you anywhere you might choose to go and requires no batteries or charger. If you prefer a higher tech mode then you can easily put your text onto a laptop, tablet or e-reader. If you use print (or if, like me, you’re fortunate enough to have an e-reader with note-taking capability) then you can also write notes directly on to the text to your heart’s content as you read. If you need to transfer your text from a digital to an analogue form, then there’s the option to use a printer to do so. There is no equivalent to this extreme of practical flexibility when it comes to other media.
Text is flexible in other ways too. It is comparatively easy to translate, whether using digital tools to make sense of short sections, or proper human translators for entire lengthy texts. My friends who are specialists in translation studies would happily point out at great length that a “perfect” translation of a text is not possible, but a functional one usually is, particularly where we’re talking about works of non-fiction. Reading a translation doesn’t have quite the same time-and-space-travelling effect that you would get from reading the original text, but it can still create the illusion of it. That’s very different from watching a dubbed video where you’re always conscious of the disconnect between image and audio, which of course is why many of us prefer to read subtitles.
I’d also add a note here on audio. Many electrons have been spilled over the question of whether listening to audiobooks counts as reading, or whether we need another word for it. I won’t engage in this particular bit of scholasticism, suffice to say that I am a big audiobook listener. The point I would make about audiobooks is that they are still essentially books, that is, they are another adaptation of the book text. In other words, they are yet another example of how flexible written text is as a medium.
Control
I’ll end with this slightly more esoteric point in favour of reading. There is a stillness inherent to the act of reading, a sense of focus moderated by the possibility of slowing down, speeding up, or outright stopping to flick backwards or forwards to check something. Sometimes this makes it more efficient than other media, other times it might be less time-efficient, but more efficacious in terms of actually absorbing and understanding the story or information being conveyed. As a reader you are so much more in control than you are with any other medium.
Aside from all the practical benefits of this control, reading brings the option to be actively and critically engaged, or else calm, reflective and mindful, depending on what you are reading, why you are reading, and simply your mood at the time. It can certainly be a valuable means of obtaining information efficiently and effectively, but it can also be a calming, meditative activity to engage in for its own sake.
Of course, given that I have chose a textual medium in which to express these thoughts, I imagine I am preaching to the converted here. Nevertheless, I hope today’s update has given you a moment to reflect on your own reasons for reading, and writing.
As always, if you’ve felt inspired by this to add another text for others to read, engage with and perhaps meditate over, please do get in touch at proposals@tbarnpress.com.
