Light Reading: A Triptych
by Susan Olding
Focusing on an image by Kertesz by Martha Highers
I.
In her fifties, my mother learned that she had early cataracts. Surgery was scheduled for her first eye. Routine, they said. She’d be in and out within hours. But when she arrived on the appointed day, her doctor, in his preliminary check, discovered something more serious. Her right retina had become detached.
Hadn’t she noticed symptoms? Flashes of light, floaters, shadows to the side? Blurriness? But, of course, there was blurriness. She’d been myopic for decades, and now she had cataracts. She expected her vision to be blurry. Perhaps she had suffered an accident? A blow to the head? As a child, she had fallen out of a slowly moving car onto her forehead, she said, parting her hair to show them the scar. They shrugged. Really, there was no telling the cause.
The operation was not a success. She had to have another, and then another. Even today, decades later, retinal resealing is a delicate and sometimes doomed process. Back then, laser eye surgery was in its infancy. And the more attempts made, the greater the risk of scar tissue. The longer a retina has been damaged, the lower the likelihood of success. My mother’s retina may have been torn for a long time. There was little they could do.
Problems also surfaced in her second eye. It could not tolerate a replacement lens and became infected. She developed glaucoma. And in the weeks and months that followed, her vision got worse and worse. Even with corrective glasses, she was legally and functionally blind.
She had to stop using a car. This was a blow, because we lived in a suburb, and for decades driving had been one of her chief pleasures. In fact, for years after her operations, she stubbornly kept up insurance payments on the car. “Just in case.”
Her other joy was reading. Throughout my childhood, she’d made weekly trips to our local library, carting home a baker’s dozen of books every time. Devoted to mysteries, she supplemented these with the occasional bestseller or more literary title. She piled them in tidy towers near her chair, devouring one or more each day, rationing them like sweets. Now this pleasure was severely restricted.
Why doesn’t she learn Braille, I thought, with the defensive arrogance of youth. Why doesn’t she listen to audiobooks? That is what I would do in her position. Instead, for as long as possible, she requested large print books from interlibrary loan, and wielding a Sherlock Holmes-style caricature of a magnifying glass, she struggled for hours over a couple of pages.
As the years went on, and she spent more and more of her days wedged into a dusty-rose wingchair in the living room, she grew frail from lack of exercise, and books became increasingly heavy for her. Eventually, she could not hold them for the time required to make sense of them. She stopped reading books, preferring magazines for their lighter weight. Her world became smaller and smaller. Finally, the most she could manage was a three-inch square of newspaper.
In the nineties, I profiled an optometrist for a local alternative health magazine. He specialized in low vision. “You have to ask what people miss,” he told me. “It’s different for everyone.” One of his patients longed more than anything to plant her garden. Every year since losing her vision, she had tried, but distributing seeds straight from a packet led to overcrowded patches and empty lanes. She couldn’t tell where they were going. For her, he had punctured the lid of a jar in multiple spots to create a simple shaker. With the shaker, she could strew her seeds in a loose and even pattern along each row. She might never see their delicate leaves tossing in the wind, but she could taste the carrots at harvest time.
The optometrist also described and showed me more sophisticated assistive devices, including a machine similar to a microfiche reader that would magnify the text in a book and project it onto a screen, making it legible to almost anyone.
Why didn’t my mother have one of these, I wondered. I couldn’t wait to tell her about it. Yet when I did, her reaction surprised me. She didn’t ask questions. She turned her face away. She changed the subject. I left my article with her, thinking my dad or my brother could discuss it with her later. Maybe she needed time to process the information. But when I spoke of it again, her answers were vague and uncharacteristically scattered. She didn’t seem interested. Finally, I let it drop.
It was years before I understood. My father, fiercely independent, had refused to ask the government to recognize my mother’s disability. “We can manage,” he used to say. “Other people need the help more than we do. We’re okay.” But without the designation, she could not register with the National Association for the Blind. And unless she was a member of the association, she didn’t qualify to receive this device or many of the other aids that might have helped her.
She wouldn’t try a computer. I bought her an early Kindle, but its tiny buttons defeated her. A tablet or a cell phone were out of the question. Even an old-fashioned tape recorder tested her patience. And listening wasn’t reading anyway. She would rather put on the TV.
My father died in 2010. Shortly afterwards, my mother hired someone to help her manage her finances. Within weeks, this woman had applied on my mother’s behalf for the disability designation. Then came the application to the association for the blind, and at long last, an appointment to meet with someone there.
She came home first with a talking clock that would tell her the hour when she woke. Then she bought writing paper with widely spaced, thick, black lines that would allow her to correspond with distant family and friends. Finally, she got the machine; it was called the Big Reader. By this time, anyone could buy one—or anyone who could afford it. You didn’t have to be a member of the association. You could order it over the Internet and have it delivered.
Hers arrived, muffled in cardboard and plastic, massive and ungainly, more like an old- fashioned computer or TV than like a newer flat screen. My brother and I exchanged a worried glance. In the online catalogue, it had looked considerably sleeker.
Setting the machine on a desk would have been the obvious and sensible thing to do. But my mother had her own ideas. She didn’t want to use it in a study or a bedroom. She wanted to use it from Station Central, the living room wingchair where she’d spent most of the last three decades. “I can keep an eye on the neighbours,” she said—which she did, through high-powered binoculars. “I can hear if someone comes up the walk.”
My aunt brought her a microwave stand to set it on. But the stand was too tall, and too square, and too difficult to move; my mother returned it. Next, I brought her a large, height- adjustable laptop table. This looked more promising—it rolled up to her chair like a hospital tray and could be pushed away when she was finished with it. But the Big Reader’s base was at least an inch too wide for this table, and my brother worried that she would knock the machine off, or fall while trying to balance it, or trip on its dangling cord. So, he moved the Reader aside, to the couch, where it sat for a while like a sullen guest. Later he placed it on the dining room table.
“I need a grounded plug,” my mother said a few weeks later, when I called to ask if she’d managed to get the machine set up. There were only two of those in the house, which had not been fully rewired since its construction in the sixties. But more weeks passed, and she didn’t call the electrician, and the Reader hulked on the table, still covered in its plastic shroud. Because really, what was the point? If she couldn’t use the thing in comfort, pretty much the way she would have enjoyed a book, she didn’t want to use it at all.
In the end, she asked my brother to box it up and send it back. “It isn’t going to work for me,” she said.
“Are you sure? Maybe if you got another lesson? Maybe if you tried again?”
“No,” she told me. “It’s too late.”
In the end, the Big Reader promised a fantasy and concealed a truth. “Wrestling with reading,” says reading scholar Andrew Piper, “is a way of reflecting on who we once were and who we want to be.” To lay a page in that device, to see the words taking shape on that big screen, would have stripped a veil from the past and reminded her of all she had lost.
II.
A few years ago, I ran into an estranged friend, also a writer. We sniffed each other like a pair of dogs, exchanging cautious pleasantries about things of no importance. Our conversation then turned to an award-winning and controversial novel.
“I don’t know,” she said, after a few minutes of halting yet pleasantly acerbic gossip. “I guess I shouldn’t comment. I haven’t actually read it.”
“Me neither,” I admitted.
There was a pause.
“Then again,” I blurted, “I hardly read anything these days.”
What had possessed me to say that? A gulf of mistrust stretched between my former friend and me. And here I was, laying myself wide open to her disdain.
Breathe, I told myself, bracing for the sneer that I knew was coming. Just breathe.
But instead of the contempt I was expecting, she set down her teacup with an expression that looked surprisingly like relief.
“And, if we don’t read,” I whispered. We, meaning writers. Lovers of the word.
“I know.” Her eyes met mine, culpable and chagrined. For a moment, we were as close to one another as we’d ever been.
“You do read,” my husband, Mark, insists. He’s lying in bed with his iPad propped against his knees.
The iPad is his new appendage. He has taken to the tablet with disgusting ease, managing his music, his recipes, his newspapers and magazines, his crossword puzzles, and, most of all, an expanding library of books from its sleek deck.
Mark’s right, of course. I read. In fact, in a typical day, I do little else. It’s just that, like him—like most of us these days—I read far more often from a glowing screen than from a printed page. And I read news articles. Columns. Student papers, other work-related material, or academic papers. Rarely, books. It doesn’t feel the same.
Is my creeping disengagement with books a sign of sloth, stupidity, or something worse? No, I tell myself. It’s not my fault. It’s just an unfortunate side effect of middle age. Severely myopic since childhood, these days I struggle equally with print at close range. My glasses are heavy. They hurt my head. And my ‘progressive’ contacts serve only to soften my vision at every distance. I have to buy a pair of drugstore readers to compensate. Except they don’t.
“It’s the lighting,” I complain. “It isn’t bright enough in here.” And I bring my laptop to bed.
On my birthday, Mark presents me with the latest Kindle. “Backlit,” he crows. “Adjustable! You’ll be able to see the print.” But I fail to show the proper gratitude. Another device, I think bitterly, another tool. And what has utility to do with joy?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the more time we spend on our screens, the less time we spend reading books. And literary reading takes the biggest hit. Since at least 2004, the American National Endowment for the Arts has been calling the alarm. To Read or Not to Read, the NEA’s 2007 report, noted a seven-point decline in literary readers over a ten-year period; only 47 per cent of Americans surveyed had read one work of literature within the previous year. Note that by a “work of literature,” the NEA meant a novel, short story, play, or a poem. That’s right—a single poem. Admittedly, a year later, the organization was more optimistic; Reading on the Rise, its 2008 follow up, boasted that for the first time in a quarter century, more Americans were reading literary works—and according to their most recent studies, this held true regardless of their age, gender, or race. But the fine print was a little less encouraging: instead of 47 per cent of Americans, 50 per cent had read a literary work in the previous year. A three per cent increase in so-called literary readers doesn’t sound all that significant to me, especially considering the standard. I mean, seriously: one poem?
Anyway, by 2012, literary reading levels had fallen back to their previous lows. And, apart from poetry-reading, which, incredibly, doubled in 2017 alone, reading levels have remained consistent ever since. Besides, even if half of Americans manage to read a novel or story or play or poem in any given year, surely this also suggests that the other half do not. They don’t know what they’re missing, I might have said, in another phase of my life. And it’s true— they probably don’t. I, on the other hand, do know what I’m missing. So, what’s my excuse?
If I were French, and sophisticated, I might laugh it off. I might even feel a soupçon of pride. I could declare not reading a reasonable response to the overflow of text in our lives, a principled decision, a stance. For support, I’d look to academic and author Pierre Bayard, whose How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read wittily justifies non-reading as an intellectually viable position, and, with a rigor worthy of Diderot, also seeks to classify its various strains. Or so I understand. I haven’t actually read it.
But Bayard’s distinctions between the “UB,” or unknown book, the “SB,” or skimmed book, the “HB,” or heard-about book, and the “FB” or forgotten book don’t do a whole lot for me. HB just makes me think of a pencil, and by extension, writing, which typically results in more books, which I won’t read. FB: isn’t that the abbreviation for Facebook?
Unlike the General in Musil’s Man Without Qualities—another HB, to me—I didn’t really imagine that I might read all the books. But I could never have guessed that I’d stop trying.
Study after study attests: reading makes us smarter. It enriches our vocabularies, improves our spelling, boosts our test scores, and adds to our fund of knowledge. It strengthens concentration, memory, and mental health. It even prevents dementia, or, at minimum, slows its course.
The benefits don’t stop there. Reading can also make us better people. Literary fiction, it is said, boosts empathy and social skills in specific and measurable ways. And the more a story transports us, the greater this emotional shift. Avid readers are more creative, more mentally flexible, healthier, and more relaxed than non-readers. They exercise more often. They’re even better citizens—more informed about politics, more likely to attend cultural events, and more apt to volunteer their time to worthy organizations.
How long since we got that high-speed connection? More than a decade now. And all that time, my white matter has been withering. Ten years of slowing synapses, shrivelling cells, and a shrinking soul. The thought appalls.
But when I delve a little deeper, I discover my fears may be unfounded. Because it turns out that much of the research about reading has little to do with the reading of books. And, when it comes to many of reading’s benefits, any kind of text will do. The Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, War and Peace, the ads on the back of a cereal box, or the slogans printed on a Pokémon card—it’s mostly the same to the thirsty and undiscriminating brain. In fact, it may not even be reading, per se, that’s important. Playing chess or even a video game could lead to similar mental improvements.
I have a hard time believing that. I am too much a product of my time and place, too much a product of my earlier passions. Reading a printed book feels fundamentally different from playing a game or fiddling with something on a screen; surely it results in a different type of neuronal development?
I get out a piece of paper and draw up a simple chart. At the end of a day of not reading, or in other words, screen reading, what do I feel like?
Anxious. Cramped. Agitated. Numb.
Then I make a similar list for reading books—printed books.
Calm. Spacious. Meditative. Alert.
I’m not alone. A growing body of evidence supports the view that reading from screens is less satisfying than reading from books, even for so-called digital natives. Teens who read exclusively from screens are three times less likely to enjoy and benefit from reading than those who also read books. Comprehension suffers, along with judgment. Not only do people who read from screens understand less, they think they have understood more. As a recipe for miseducation, nothing could be more efficient.
When my daughter was a baby, someone gave her a copy of Pat the Bunny. At story time, we’d snuggle together on a tub chair inherited from my parents, stroking the bunny’s fur, looking in the mirror, smelling the flowers, playing peekaboo. A little later, we discovered Eric Carle’s From Head to Toe, which rescued an active toddler from boredom with built-in wiggle breaks. She stomped like an elephant, thumped like a gorilla, and bent like a giraffe while her father and I looked on, laughing like hyenas at her contortions.
Until I became a parent, I never really understood these books. They weren’t interesting stories, and they didn’t present a lot of information. What were they about? What were they for? With a child on my lap, the answer became obvious. Story and information were beside the point. These books were about building associations. They taught a child to connect reading with intimacy, discovery, and fun. And to do that, they relied on all the senses.
Our earliest, most primal associations with the act of reading involve our sense of touch. It is as embodied beings that we first encounter the magic of words on a page. Nestled in a warm lap, we beg to turn the pages with our stubby fingers. Screen reading, by contrast, is spectral. And this is part of why it feels so insubstantial. Yes, we can point; yes, we can click—but a screen, unlike a book, is shiny, all surface, impenetrable. Reading on screen breaks an all- important conduit to our senses. No wonder it fails to satisfy. No wonder it fails to impress.
And print has other advantages. For our brains treat text as a kind of landscape. Meaning resides in its structure and shape. We remember a plot point or metaphor or argument partly by ‘locating’ it on our internal image of the volume or a page. Books, because of their physicality, are easier than screens for our minds to map and understand. When we can’t perform this act of mental navigation, we lose all sense of context.
Ever since Augustine, the material fact of the book has made it a powerful force for personal change. “‘Take it and read, take it and read,’ repeats the divine refrain . . . In taking hold of books . . . we are taken hold of by books,” says Andrew Piper. And, unlike the firmly upright, shapely, and distinct spines of books, digital texts are jellyfish-like, shifting, amorphous—always, in some sense, ungraspable.
The English word ‘book’ comes from the Germanic boc, or beech, as in the tree. This makes sense if you recall that beech and birch and ash bark gave us our earliest scrolls. The word ‘screen,’ meanwhile, goes back to the Proto-Indo-European (s)ker—to cut—but also to shine, because many cutting implements display a sheen. From ‘cut’ comes the sense of protection and defence in related words like ‘scabbard’ and ‘shield,’ and by the fourteenth century, a screen had become a protective barrier against fire. Perhaps the fire of beech logs themselves, for beech wood splits easily, and burns for hours with calm flames.
To this day, our screens protect and shield—and also filter and conceal. A page, in comparison, ‘fixes,’ or ‘fastens.’ Page—from the Old French, pagne, a trellis to secure vines, which led to the sense of columns of writing on a scroll. When scrolls gave way to books, we continued to use the word.
Only now, with the advent of a new kind of scroll, are we coming unfastened from the page.
