Blank books have essentially the same readable value as no books. If we lose the ability to read we lose the ability to write, with cascading downstream implications.
I’ve never been able to read Henry James. I’ll grant that he’s important—influential and transformative and perceptive and such—and I respect that his contribution to literature matters profoundly. But I’ve never felt especially comfortable dressed as one should for a proper afternoon tea, perched on the edge of a well upholstered settee. That’s just not my scene, even as I recognize the astute observations James makes of its habitués. I can recognize his literary importance without embracing the substance of his work. I may even feel a pang of chagrin to admit that I’m glad there are those who can, even if I’m not one of their number.
James Baldwin is different. His voice I understand better, although I share just as much commonality with his characters in “If Beale Street Could Talk” as I do with James’s “The American”, which is to say effectively none. Literature is funny like that. Baldwin resonates with me and James does not, but they are both vital voices in a long history of human voices speaking across the decades. Neither of them writes about circumstances I know by personal experience, but that may be one the biggest attractions of literature in the first place. It is, perhaps, the most direct way to climb into the personal thoughts of another person.
I suspect very few reading this blog grew up on a small suburban street in Surrey, England. I’m certain that nobody reading this blog grew up in Surrey with a lightning bolt scar just beneath their hairline. Seeing yourself realistically depicted in literature is usually not the point. Seeing yourself projected into unfamiliar circumstances most certainly is. We read fiction because the process of projecting ourselves into the life of another person, real or imagined, gives us a chance to experiment and explore and even visit spaces that otherwise might make no sense.
Literature is not news. Its stories are not real; its stories are not true; its stories are made up. But literature itself is real. It synthesizes what we know as much as it collects details and conjures worlds we don’t. Literature enables thought experiments for events that are dangerous and amorous and timorous and plain. Literature is a world that exists parallel to our own, with the potential to implant feelings and sensations and provocations directly in to the mind of a reader.
These days, alas, literature struggles. Nobody is surprised, considering the inhumanly mesmeric qualities of our rectangular portals to infinitude. (That’s your damn, phone, Yo!) Where novels might once have held a reader’s attention, flashier, faster story streams now hold us in their thrall. There are many who used to savor the satisfying efforts necessary to read a novel. In the era of social media, many people have willingly capitulated to the erosion of those abilities. If an Instagram reel can deliver you a little bump in 20 seconds, does anyone really need to parse 20 pages to advance the plot?
Millions of words have already been typed about the relentless dopamine addiction created by those 20-second shorts. People lose the ability to digest complex stories because they simply take more work than slurping social media reels through a straw. One has to wonder if the loss of the ability ever feels like a personal loss? The evidence suggests that many people don’t even realize what they’ve lost, to say nothing of worry about what they’re missing.
I worry about a culture made of people who cannot sustain their focus on a narrative longer than a social media reel. If we cannot follow more complex stories, it stands to reason that our collective abilities for creating complex stories will inevitably atrophy in relative proportion.
But look: I’m not moralizing here. I don’t hold my fellow fiction readers in higher esteem than those who don’t. I don’t profess to be a better person, or a more worthy thinker, or someone worth keeping around when the zombie apocalypse forces you to choose who gets to stay when you seal the gates to the compound. (I can cook, so remember that when you make your choices.) But I do lament the implications of a less literate world.
If you’ve read a book and I’ve read the same book, we automatically share a wealth of experience. The networking effect of this magnifies itself in a shared vocabulary not only of characters and fictitious events, but thought experiments and feelings and consequences wrought of circumstances that we might not otherwise consider. My lament, therefore, stems from being forced to live in a world impoverished by a vacancy of these shared references.
Our lives are short. One would like to think we might learn something about each other before we no longer have the chance.