Reading Isolates Readers. That’s the Point.

Matthew Graybosch 

I found an article by Scott Timberg on Al Jazeera America on Friday that has nagged at me all weekend. This article, given the trolling and SEO-friendly headline “Is Reading Too Much Bad for Kids?”, is surely a sign from some god with a malign sense of humor that I have seen everything. The subhead argues, “Clinging to print can isolate kids and alienate them from the digital world of multitasking.”

In fairness to the author, he starts by expressing pride in his seven-year-old son who is growing up to be a fine young bookworm who has to be forbidden from bringing “Encyclopedia Brown” to the dinner table. However, Timberg suggests his boy is growing up in the wrong country and in the wrong century as he writes:

Our concern is whether he will find some other kid who shares his enthusiasm. So far, he hasn’t.

Furthermore, he concludes his article with the following:

On reflection, I realize it’s not my son, or Boog’s daughter, who needs to change: The culture they’re growing up into has lost its sense of what matters. But parenting is not just about preparing kids for careers; it’s about asserting values, and serious reading may be what my family has instead of a religious or ethnic identity. If my son’s peers, or the culture at large, find another god to worship, it will be their loss.

Though I’m not a parent myself, I can approve this sentiment. It’s certainly much better than anything the New Republic offers in articles like “Why Reading Isn’t Always Good for You” by Leo Robson. Robson quotes John Carey, who writes in The Unexpected Professor that “…living your truest life in books may deaden the real world for you as well as enliven it.”

Robson describes Carey’s autobiography as “a glories-of-reading memoir that doubles as an anti-reading memoir”, and argues that reading — especially reading literature enshrined in the Western Canon — does not make one smarter, wiser, more moral, or in general a better human being.

No doubt Robson thinks his argument matters, and it might to people who stand to gain from the further destruction of reading for pleasure — not self-improvement or learning, but for the sheer unholy joyous pleasure of reading — as a pastime for the average American.

It doesn’t matter to me. I will continue to read for pleasure, and I will read whatever I damned well please. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. You can offer no argument capable of dissuading me from reading.

Reading Precludes Multitasking

This seems to be the argument du jour. Digital utopians like to argue that clinging to print media, or long texts like novels, makes it impossible for people to learn to multitask — a skill allegedly key to success in the modern digital environment.

The people who argue for human multitasking aren’t programmers. If they were, they’d damned well know better. They would understand that humans are no better at multitasking than single-processor computers. At most, humans are capable of task-switching, and it takes so much longer for people to do it than it does for computers that task switching is best left to computers.

Computers create the illusion of multitasking by flitting between processes thousands of times a second. We can’t do that, but we can focus on a single task that genuinely matters and dig deep. A lifelong habit of reading can help further develop that skill.

Reading Isolates Children From Their Peers

Yes, being a bookworm does tend to isolate children from non-readers their age. However, I don’t blame reading for this isolation. I blame the parents. At risk of delivering a proclamation from all kinds of privilege, to say nothing of being utterly self-serving because I am a novelist, I have the following to say on the subject of raising children who don’t read and don’t value reading:

If your children reach adulthood, and do not read for pleasure, I blame you. Not the public schools, not the anti-intellectual American culture, but you. You are not only a bad parent, but a bad citizen of modern Western civilization, and a lousy human being.

By raising children who don’t take pleasure in reading, you not only deprive your own children, but you given them an excuse to see children who enjoy reading as “different” from them and therefore fair game for bullying.

If you find this objectionable, I suggest you direct your objections to somebody who cares. Start with your gods, if you have any.

Readers are Antisocial

This is one of my favorites, as it has often been applied to me. Nor am I the only one who has been treated to this idiocy. I suspect this objection comes mainly from extroverted people and is aimed at introverted people who “hide behind books” because it isn’t as objectionable a method for dealing with intrusive strangers as violence.

Let’s clear up a little misconception, shall we? Pay attention, because there will be a test on this subject. Your identity is irrelevant. Your reasons for wanting another person’s attention is irrelevant. You are not entitled to another person’s attention.

If somebody is sitting quietly and reading, and you bother them, you aren’t being sociable. You aren’t being friendly. You aren’t being nice. If you bother people who aren’t bothering you, you’re an asshole. You’re the one being anti-social, by making society unpleasant for other people.

Reading Doesn’t Make You a Better Person

I can answer this point in three words: No shit, Sherlock! I would be the last person to claim that reading has made me a more moral person. Nor will I claim that reading has made me more empathetic and humane. I won’t even suggest that reading has made me better-informed.

Each of these claims is a gross oversimplification of the truth. Not only is reading fundamental, but one must also read the right books, learn from them, and apply this knowledge to daily life. You won’t become a Stoic by simply reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. You must also live in accordance with the book’s teachings and make the author’s philosophy your own.

Readers are Isolated from Mainstream Culture

Here’s another one I sometimes hear, mainly from people who mistake what they like for mainstream culture. I know better. I know books aren’t part of mainstream American culture, and haven’t been for a long time. The same goes for everything else I like. That doesn’t bother me.

However, some people manage to navigate daily life while retaining a sense of entitlement permitting them to feel justified in suggesting there’s something wrong with me because I don’t like everything they like. To think I might display such effrontery!

To those who can’t grasp the idea that their cultural preferences are anything but universal, here’s a newsflash: The United States alone has a population of almost 350 million people as of the 2010 census, and that population is sprawled across a continent. Despite the best efforts of a corporate media machine controlled by an ever-shrinking proportion of the population, there is no such thing as a single mainstream American culture.

If you yearn for a golden age where everybody lives the same way you do, you have no business accusing me or any other bookworm of being isolated from the mainstream. Nor do you have any right to accuse people like me of living in a fantasy world.

Expect No Apology

If after reading this monstrosity of a post you still expect me to apologize for being a reader, I suggest you seek help from a qualified mental health professional. Do I realize that preferring books to most people makes me weird, selfish, and misanthropic? Yes. What makes you think I give a damn?

Here’s the deal: if you want me to care more about you than I care about my reading, be a person worth caring about. Have something interesting to say. Have something to offer. Try reading a book once in a while, preferably one I wrote.

But never expect me or any other reader to apologize for loving the words some people write more than most people. You’ll get better results by expecting ice to be warm and fire to be cold.