Some years ago, I decided to try my hand at learning Tibetan. Honestly, I didn’t make it much past the alphabet and a smattering of simple words. But I did learn one interesting thing from my teacher, which is that the Tibetan people view the written word as inherently sacred. Language lessons were preceded by a prayer to Manjushri and even my pages of infantile scribbles were never allowed to touch the floor.
While I learned little Tibetan, I was impressed by this attitude toward reading and writing. Since that time, I have been more aware of the miraculous nature of print. It is astonishing that our brains can, with so little apparent effort, translate tiny lines of characters into meaning.
So, while stumbling through the literary netherworld that is Google Books, I paused at a short pamphlet called On Reading (1906) by Georg Morris Cohen Brandes. Brandes (1842-1927) was a Danish literary critic who seems to have been primarily concerned with Scandinavian literature.
The essay is an interesting read, despite a lengthy detour into Napoleonic military history that left me baffled. He begins by noting the hopelessness of coming up with a list of books that are the best books for everyone. (I imagine Harold Bloom would disagree.) He goes on to lament the woeful state of reading in the early 20th century, stating that most people read only newspapers. He proceeds to address the questions of why, what, and how to read. His answers to “why” are fairly standard, so I will focus on “what” and “how.”
It is a good thing, too, if one has the means, to own one’s own books. … There are people who are content, as to books, with the provision afforded them by circulating libraries, —a sorry method at the best. It is a sure sign of failing culture and poor taste when at every watering-place in a great country expensively dressed women are invariably seen each with a greasy novel from a circulating library in her hand. These ladies, who would be ashamed to borrow a dress, or wear second hand clothes, do not hesitate to economize in book-buying.
As a librarian, this greatly amuses me. Even among non-readers, libraries in America are perceived as a societal good. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone opine that checking out a book is a bad thing. (Excepting my grandmother, whose objection was hygienic rather than intellectual.)
Part of Brandes’s dislike of book borrowing relates to his advocacy of reading books more than once.
… it is regarded as a changeless rule that one time is no time at all, that a man who restricts himself to one reading of a good book knows little about it. The books I value I have frequently read more than ten times; indeed, in some cases I could not possibly say how many times. One does not really know a book until one knows it almost by heart.
It is a great relief to hear this sentiment expressed by a literary critic. As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to feel guilty or lazy when I re-read books. While I greatly enjoy the practice, I am sufficiently conscious of my own mortality that I realize that every re-reading likely marks another book that I won’t have time to read. But Brandes has an answer even for this, advocating an approach to reading in general which is more intensive than extensive.
In his discussion of what to read, Brandes is especially critical of general survey works, arguing that they are inherently dishonest as no one truly has the breadth of knowledge to write such things. He extends this suspicion into the realm of education.
There is nowadays a superstition in favor of so-called general education, —a phrase of which I confess I am a little afraid. If we read to obtain a general education, our reading easily becomes so general that there is no education in it. We read now about whales, now about the Congo State, now about the drama, now about teeth, now about Socialism in Bavaria […] —a heterogeneous collection of facts, —and we consider ourselves generally educated.
If he felt in 1906 that knowledge was approached in too scattershot a manner, we can only imagine what he would think of our alleged “Information Age,” in which innumerable topics may be encountered in a single session of web surfing. I recall the numerous “survey courses” to which I was subjected as an undergraduate and must reluctantly agree that the summation of these did not leave me feeling “generally educated.” Observing my current behavior, I notice that my “active shelf” of books contains Victorian novels (of course), an anthology of Romantic poetry, The Illiad, various books on natural history, and the collected works of H. P. Lovecraft. Some might say that this makes me “well-rounded” or “eclectic” (a word which is very fashionable and of which I am deeply suspicious). I suspect that it merely indicates a tendency to graze rather than delve. It is, at any rate, something to consider as I enter upon a new year of reading. “A naturalist,” Brandes asserts, “can discuss an insect in such a manner as to reveal an insight into the universe.”