John Henry Newman Critiques "Love of Reading"

Novels are a relatively new form of writing, even though to many readers, such fiction has become the definition of "classic literature." There was a time when novels were the low-brow entertainment of the educated class; merely a recent innovation that did not belong in the same category as history, biography, science, essays, and especially the (Greek and Roman) Classics. Voracious novel-readers were as little admired then as are consumers of reality T.V. today. Civil War general Robert E. Lee felt that novels "weakened the mind." Even the characters in novels expressed concern over excessive novel-reading (in Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins, a diet of unrealistic adventure stories is compared to the habit of smoking and drinking as an unhealthy way to pass the time).

Yet since the genre's appearance, great and worthy novels have been written. Such books do not "weaken the mind" (check out THIS COOL STUDY: reading literary fiction was observed to make participants more empathetic and better at interpreting nuances in people). However, I wonder if novels have contributed to the way we often treat literature as something to consume.  Unlike essays on morality or love, novels provide a format that is utilized by pop fiction (popular novels did not improve social skills in the study mentioned above). Pop fiction is meant to be enjoyed once, quickly, and tossed aside. Perhaps it has made us forget how we ought to read. In Of Other Worlds, C.S. Lewis remarks, "There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristram Shandy or Shakespeare's Son­nets: but what can you do with a man who says he 'has read’ them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter?"

Now that even more consumable forms of entertainment compete with pop writing, I wonder if our culture has swung too far in our encouragement of any reading at all and our eagerness to praise whatsoever printed pages can hold the attention of an electronic generation. In our eagerness to encourage reading, perhaps we forget the differences between engaging with texts and consuming them. Perhaps we romanticize the consumption of books. John Henry Newman's critique of reading in his own, nineteenth-century context is food for thought (Newman was an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism, was made a cardinal, and wrote The Idea of the University): 

“Nothing is more common in an age like this, when books abound, than to fancy that the gratification of a love of reading is real study….Such minds cannot fix their gaze on one object for two seconds together; the very impulse which leads them to read at all, leads them to read on, and never stay or hang over any one idea. The pleasurable excitement of reading what is new is their motive principle; and the imagination that they are doing something, and the boyish vanity which accompanies it, are their reward….they will have no consistency, steadiness, or perseverance; they will not be able to make a telling speech, or to write a good letter, or to fling in debate a smart antagonist….They cannot state an argument or a question, or take a clear survey of a whole transaction, or give sensible and appropriate advice under difficulties, or do any of those things which inspire confidence and gain influence, which raise a man in life, and make him useful to his religion or his country.” John Henry Newman, 1852. 

Newman objected to young men who read books instead of studying them (it's a bit ironic that many of us would be impressed by anyone who read the materials that his students were reading "too quickly"). His words remind me of Francis Bacon's comment: “Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.” Nowadays, especially in the field of education, we praise young readers who "devour." Public libraries hold contests in which children compete to read the most books. Home school parents are proud of their little bookworms who can be found in volume 22 of the Redwall series or who breeze through a novel each evening. We forget to encourage proper chewing and digestion. 

As a teacher, I heard many parents tell their children, "You've already read that! Come on, pick out something new." Perhaps we should encourage more rereading of good books. It builds the habit of getting to truly know a story. It teaches us to read for reasons beyond pure suspense. It makes friends of books. C.S. Lewis points out, "If you find that the reader of popular romance— however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances—goes back to his old favourites again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry."

Perhaps we read too many books. As Mortimer J Adler said, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

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... And because Calvin and Hobbes is always appropriate...

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