Time for Slow Reading and Slow Writing
Monday July 13, 2009
Whether it's food and travel we're talking about or reading and writing, faster isn’t always better.
There's a time to skim. And a time to read.
There's a time to twitter (or tweet). And a time to write.
What matters is knowing the appropriate time to speed up or slow down.
Slow Reading
In his preface to Daybreak (1887), German philosopher and philologist Friedrich Nietzsche recommended the practice of slow reading:
It is not for nothing that I have been a philologist, perhaps I am a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading:--in the end I also write slowly. Nowadays it is not only my habit, it is also to my taste--a malicious taste, perhaps?--no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is "in a hurry." For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow--it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the world which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento.
But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of "work," that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to "get everything done" at once, including every old or new book:--this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers.
(Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, translated by R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press, 1997)
To get the highlights of an article, the gist of a report, an overview of a book,
skim. But to engage with a text--to understand it, quarrel with it, enjoy it--set aside time to
read. Slowly.
Slow Writing
As Nietzsche suggests, we're more apt to read with care what has been written without haste. And good, slow writing demands that we occasionally disconnect ourselves from the hyperconnected world. That's an argument Professor Naomi S. Baron makes in her recent study of the ways we use online and mobile technologies:
Fast writing is fine for putting together a "to do" list, dashing off an IM to a colleague, or jotting down the outline (or even first draft) of an argument. But slow writing--perhaps even handwritten, perhaps composed at a keyboard, but definitely revised and edited--must remain the gold standard for writing text that enables us to formulate and convey meaningful analysis to others and to ourselves. The problem with contemporary writing technologies is not [that] they enable us to write quickly but that they threaten to overwhelm slow writing. The challenge is that the convenience of email, IM, and texting tempts us to sacrifice intellect and elegance for immediacy.
(Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, Oxford University Press, 2008)
So when the occasion demands good, thoughtful writing, close your browser and shut off your phone. It's time to think. It's time to write slowly.
More About Slow Reading and Writing:
Image: Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, by Naomi S. Baron, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008
William H. Gass and the Pleasures of the List
Friday July 10, 2009
In his remarkable essay on the conjunction "AND" (Habitations of the Word, 1985), author William H. Gass describes the list as "one of the essential elements of a truly contemporary style." Not the shopping list or the hit list, the to-do list or the top-ten list, but what Gass calls "delightfully sheer enumerations."
Who enjoys a good list? Anyone who takes pleasure in the sounds and textures of language, Gass says--and in the various shades of meaning conveyed by words arranged in rows:
Lists, then, are for those who savor, who revel and wallow, who embrace, not only the whole of things, but all of its accounts, histories, descriptions, justifications. . . . Even the jeremiad is a list, and full of joy, for damnations are delightful. Lists are finally for those who love language, the vowel-swollen cheek, the lilting, dancing tongue, because lists are fields full of words, and roving bands of "and."
The items in a list may be lined up with nothing more than commas between them (a sentence style known as
asyndeton). Or they may be linked more exuberantly by Gass's "roving bands of 'and'" (
polysyndeton).
Of course, in the hands of a good writer, these styles can be imaginatively combined in countless ways--as shown in these passages from Gass's own short story, "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country":
- BUSINESS
One side section of street is blocked off with sawhorses. Hard, thin, bitter men in blue jeans, cowboy boots and hats, untruck a dinky carnival. The merchants are promoting themselves. There will be free rides, raucous music, parades and coneys, pop, popcorn, candy, cones, awards, and drawings, with all you can endure of pinch, push, bawl, shove, shout, scream, shriek, and bellow. Children pedal past on decorated bicycles, their wheels a blur of color, streaming crinkled paper and excited dogs. A little later, there's a pet show for a prize--dogs, cats, birds, sheep, ponies, goats--none of which wins. The whirlabouts whirl about. The Ferris wheel climbs dizzily into the sky as far as a tall man on tiptoe might be persuaded to reach, and the irritated operators measure the height and weight of every child with sour eyes to see if they are safe for the machines. An electrical megaphone repeatedly trumpets the names of the generous sponsors. The following day they do not allow the refuse to remain long in the street.
- HOUSEHOLD APPLES
The country became my childhood. Flies braided themselves on the flypaper in my grandmother's house. I can smell the bakery and the grocery and the stables and the dairy in that small Dakota town I knew as a kid; knew as I dreamed I'd know your body, as I've known nothing, before or since; knew as the flies knew, in the honest, unchaste sense: the burned house, hose-wet, which drew a mist of insects like the blue smoke of its smolder, and gangs of boys, moist-lipped, destructive as its burning. Flies have always impressed me; they are so persistently alive. Now they were coating the ground beneath my trees. Some were ordinary flies; there were the large blue-green ones; there were swarms of fruit flies too, and the red-spotted scavenger beetle; there were a few wasps, several sorts of bees and butterflies--checkers, sulphurs, monarchs, commas, question marks--and delicate dragonflies . . . but principally houseflies and horseflies and bottleflies, flies and more flies in clusters around the rotting fruit. They loved the pears. Inside they fed. If you picked up a pear, they flew, and the pear became skin and stem. They were everywhere the fruit was: in the tree still--apples like a hive for them--or where the fruit littered the ground, squashing itself as you stepped . . . there was no help for it.
- THE CHURCH
Friday night. Girls in dark skirts and white blouses sit in ranks and scream in concerts. They carry funnels loosely stuffed with orange and black paper which they shake wildly, and small megaphones through which, as drilled, they direct and magnify their shouting. Their leaders, barely pubescent girls, prance and shake and whirl their skirts above their bloomers. The young men, leaping, extend their arms and race through puddles of amber light, their bodies glistening. In a lull, though it rarely occurs, you can hear the squeak of tennis shoes against the floor. Then the yelling begins again, and then continues: fathers, mothers, neighbors joining in to form a single pulsing ululation--a cry of the whole community--for in this gymnasium each body becomes the bodies beside it, pressed as they are together, thigh to thigh, and the same shudder runs through all of them, and runs toward the same release. Only the ball moves serenely through this dazzling din. Obedient to law it scarcely speaks but caroms quietly and lives at peace.
(from In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories, by William H. Gass, 1968; reprinted by David R Godine in 2005)
"Perhaps 'AND' should be sewn on the flag," Gass says in his essay. "Life itself can only be compiled and thereby captured on a list, if it can be laid out anywhere at all."
Writing With Lists:
Image: William H. Gass. The David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. William H. Gass was the 2007 winner of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin.
The Future of Reading!
Wednesday July 8, 2009
In the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, P.J. O'Rourke interrupts his column for this boldfaced "word from our sponsor":
Don't let words confuse you! Especially the big ones! Many words have more than one meaning! This can leave you all mixed up! And don't let people cheat you! Subscribe now to TALK LITERATURE! It's just like old-fashioned, regular literature but IT'S ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS! And there are NO BIG WORDS!
("What If Writing Were Like TV?" The Weekly Standard, July 13, 2009)
Like the talk shows and cable news programs O'Rourke satirizes, his column consists of nothing
but interruptions: snappy self-promotions, technical snafus, and nifty interactive features ("Print TiVo").
Funny stuff.
Then I learned about Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books, Each Presented in Twenty Tweets or Fewer. That's the working title for a book recently commissioned by Penguin--a retelling of literary works in Twitter format, composed by a couple of freshmen at the University of Chicago. Twitterature is scheduled to be released this fall.
And that announcement reminded me of something Philip Roth said, almost 50 years ago, about the challenges facing modern writers.
"The American writer," he said, "has his hands full in trying to understand, describe, and then make credible much of American reality. . . . The actuality is continually outdoing our talents."
Visit the Weekly Standard website to read P.J. O'Rourke's article "What If Writing Were Like TV?"
More About Reading:
Copy Editor Says It Again
Monday July 6, 2009
This past April, after 14 years as head of the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun, John E. McIntyre was abruptly "released." That's when I began to take those rumors about the death of newspapers a little more seriously.
In the word-nerdy world of copy editing, McIntyre was one of the best. He had served two terms as president of the American Copy Editors Society, taught copy editing at Loyola College in Maryland, and hosted a popular language blog, You Don't Say.
Along the way, he'd formulated five good rules for writers:
- Write the way a literate, informed adult would talk.
- Shun jargon and journalese.
- Grammar, syntax and usage are the tools of your craft. Master them.
- There are a few real rules in English and a host of bogus rules. Learn the difference.
- And, most of all, get to the point. Take this sentence: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The creation of the universe has a 10-word lead. Why does this story need more?
Fortunately, I can stop using the past tense. McIntyre now delivers "observations on language and the craft of editing" in a column for the media website Regret the Error. And a Sun-less version of his blog lives on at You Don't Say.
If you care about language, visit McIntyre's blog. He's smart, fussy, and impatient. ("The crowd doesn’t care about the windup," he once said. "The crowd wants to see the pitch.") In short, he's a copy editor.
More About Editors and Editing:
