I can’t resist a book that proposes to tell me about the history of reading. It is, to be fair, a challenging subject, covering thousands of years, and the entirety of the world. So, before immersing myself in the details of ancient scrolls, and monastic scriptoria, I thought I would jot down the questions I would hope to be answered from such a book:
- When (if ever) did we stop believing the written word as the statement of the truth?
- How did the advent of print change the way we read? Did we take print more or less seriously than words in manuscript form?
- How does digital publishing change the way we read?
- Is there a future for reading?
I know of at least two books with this very title: one by Alberto Manguel (1997), the other by Steven Roger Fischer (2003, with a new edition 2019); plus, there is Lucien Febvre’s The Coming of the Book (1958). Do they answer the questions? I will leave Manguel to another post, and in any case, his book predates widespread use of the internet.
Fischer’s book is the third of a trilogy: the first two were A History of Language, and A History of Writing, and The History of Reading is 385 pages. This suggest a willingness to tackle large subjects, if nothing else. But rather than dive into the entire book, I looked to see if he answers my questions. His preface to the new edition (2019, which is recent enough to be familiar with the internet and its implications) is disheartening. Certainly, he answers some of my questions:
When nearly six hundred years ago Western Europe first began printing books, a growing body of shared facts fashioned new ways to think and analyse from diverse read sources, at which historic juncture passive compliant reading became active creative reading. [p7]
So that’s pretty clear, for Fischer: the arrival of print introduced “active” reading (although he doesn’t give examples or define just what active reading might be).
What about the third question, does digital change the way we read? More ominously, Fischer has an answer for this question as well. He states confidently in the preface, a remark that was picked up in more than one review of his book:
Today’s white-collar worker spends more time reading than eating, drinking, grooming, travelling, socializing or on general entertainment or sport – that is, five to eight hours of each working day … The computer and Internet? Texting, Facebook, Twitter and so much more? All belong to the new reading revolution. Yet reading embraces so much more than work or Web. What music is to the spirit, reading is to the mind. Reading challenges, empowers, bewitches, enriches.” [p8]
Constant digital reading, as it is currently constituted, could actually be a social and personal impediment [p8].
In other words, we spend more time reading than ever before, but unless we are doing the right kind of reading, which I guess is books, it doesn’t do us any good. Incidentally, Fischer appears to be referring to males – “White-collar worker” doesn’t appear to include females. Perhaps we don’t count women reading.
Fischer’s concern is that “In contrast to only a century ago, today the names Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, Hugo and Cervantes … connote as a rule high-school, college and university assignments, rarely to be enjoyed after graduation.
In other words, improving books. Here is a dreadful middle-class request: why can’t the masses be more like us, enjoying the classics, as they should? “Though the knowledge of millenia lies a mere mouse-click away, few people, it seems, make responsible use of the wonderful amenity”. That sounds to me like the middle classes despairing that more use is not made of museums and archives. Surely everyone would have a similar taste to me?
Mr Fischer has the dreamy-eyed view of reading that is common to many librarians. Reading is a good: “More than a person usually appreciates, reading is egalitarian and principled, appealing to some higher order of the social woman and man. We seek quality, not rubbish. Whether for entertainment, information or special learning, most readers prefer to read what they consider to be the best.” [p353] What nonsense!
When it comes to the present-day, Fischer is a reactionary. He hasn’t bothered to update the book since the first edition (“Microfilm … enables vast stores of written materials to be documented, preserved and sold”, p355), but it doesn’t look as though his attitudes have changed since then. The young today lack maturity, which does not come from digital reading:
Those not yet mature, or simply overwhelmed by information overload, will neglect the nous for the noise. [p341]
Curiously, he holds out great hope for the bookshop :
the modern bookstore, the new incarnation of the traditional bookshop … our planet’s perceived ideal for the macro-accessing of printed information … for many, it is what the local church used to be. [p343]
That may be true for Mr Fischer, but his rosy-eyed view of bookshops is sadly very far off the mark. Print is simply a collection of words on the page. They may be just, they may be sexist, racist, offensive, but the publisher is not obliged, and nor is the bookseller, to provide a balanced view. Just because the words appear in print does not give them any special cachet. No bookshop is like the local church (and in any case since when do we believe what is said in church?). I’m afraid to say Mr Fischer is regrettably credulous and innocent. Publishers create books that sell, not to present a just view of the world. Even within committed publishers, it would take more than a few minutes to identify wide variations and disagreements within authors of the same list. So Mr Fischer’s enticing view of the bookshop is total nonsense. The saddest aspect of this statement is that he fails to mention money. Bookshops are for those who can afford to buy books. They are not like the library, or the church, or even, the internet, which is free to access.
For me, the final straw is not just that he sees books as somehow noble, but outrageously dismisses most of the developing world because they don’t read in the same way he does. If this isn’t imperialist, I don’t know what is.
Only those societies will best succeed that encourage and support a legitimate ‘culture of reading’, in particular the respect and love of books … Some peoples – most Africans, many Central and South Americans, Pacific Islanders, Aborigines, Inuit and others – still need to develop such a culture… Those missing the need to read ignore its many strengths … and so lose their place in the race. [p347]
This insistence on a literary culture, the idea that books are good – would you say that film is good, or the internet is good? No, these are meaningless questions. Books, film, the internet are simply media, to be used for better or worse. Words in print are neither good nor bad; they have to be examined and assessed. And, after assessing it, I don’t think much of Mr Fischer’s argument. I don’t think I am going to find a very balanced treatment of digital reading here.
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