Maura Kelly’s “Slow-Books Manifesto” couldn’t have come at a better time. Published by The Atlantic two days after the film release of "The Hunger Games", Kelly’s manifesto reminds readers to exert “greater control over what goes into (our) brains.” It begins with a cadence by author Michael Pollan: “Read books. As often as you can. Mostly classics.”
My main motive is to encourage you to read good literature, not to dissuade you from reading popular fiction. Read less for the stories in books, and more for the beauty in language — read for ideas, too.
The next time you pick up a novel, read slower to absorb the beauty in language. Begin to view reading as a sensual experience — sound words out loud, and if necessary make the decision to hear the assembly of sounds, the syllables prearranged by a technician. Bring the words on the page alive by uttering them into existence. Follow the steps prescribed by Nabokov as he takes his reader through the enunciation of “Lolita,” “Three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” And don’t forget to listen — begin a live dialogue with the text.
This is the experience with language that non-literary pieces and works like The Hunger Games just cannot give. When the objective of a newspaper story is to deliver information and the objective of the Twilight series is to tell an entertaining story, the means is efficiency — using words, prose-styles and plot-structures that deliver information as succinctly as possible. The prose and sentence structures of The Hunger Games are fast, with the function of satisfying quickly. What’s omitted, as a consequence, is the poetry available through language. Books like Twilight may entertain us, but they satisfy us too quickly.
Like fast food, fast literature deprives us of wholesome nourishment, the poetry that nourishes every part of our minds — not just the part that demands to be entertained.
Secondly, allow yourself to become completely immersed in the ideas of a book. Spend time being entangled in one idea and then another. Good literature can do that to you. Read slower and look for subtleties. Read as if a secret is being whispered to you in between the lines. Tear yourself out of the intellectual framework to which you’ve been accustomed and allow new ideas to inform and improve your understanding of the world. Look outward, but inward, too, and include great ideas, not just powerful beliefs, to address the questions you have about yourself and the life you lead.
Ideas in fiction like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter and Twilight series are too much of the same thing. They work only to reinforce our current understanding of the world and they don’t challenge us to think differently. When thinkers of the past needed to break out of their contemporary framework, they sought authors of the past. John Milton, writer of Paradise Lost, studied Homer and Dante, just as American modernist poet T.S. Eliot looked back to the 17th century for John Donne.
When contemporary media and literature is a re-run of the same ideas and issues, why not give yourself an intellectual vacation? Don’t become disenchanted, and worse, don’t stop thinking. Try instead, venturing into a book with unknown ideas – experiment with different perspectives and styles of language. Transport your mind to a different place and open a worthy book.
Reach the columnist at ctruong1@asu.edu
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