I hope it\u2019s temporary, my inability to read. Rather, I should call it my disability<\/em> in reading. I\u2019m actually reading much more perhaps than ever before, since it\u2019s all the time. But it\u2019s so fragmented and erratic. I read news stories, alerts, tweets, threads, threads, threads. It\u2019s twitter and its ilk becoming like rabbits in Australia, taking over. Fragments and bits, all distilled to pungent effects, like so many stabbings of wit and pure essence, pulling us this way and that, leaving us enervated and depleted, and ultimately, unfulfilled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The old curling up with a novel, and doing so as a routine in my life, over long stretches of time, no longer seems possible. The reading nowadays is forever in snatches, sometimes precipitated by a buzz on the phone, sometimes stolen in a moment of distraction, sometime sought after in a pursuit of something\u2014not sure what\u2014but primarily a distraction. There are distractions that come unbidden, and distractions that are sought after, but whatever the pursuit or activity, all that seems to “be” is \u2026 \u201cdistraction.\u201d This is my (and our society\u2019s) current state of growing pains at the takeover by cell phones, social media, new journalism, contemporary consumption of culture, the agonizing human condition, the loneliness of modern life, the desperation for remedies, the nostalgia for a simpler, long-form type of life. Nothing is long-form any more. The shelf-life of ideas, dreams, aspirations, plans has shrunk. We scramble and move on, in ways that have lost a defining purpose or value. Why bother, though we don\u2019t ask that, so we just keep the perpetual motion going, till it, mercifully?, stops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is this all but the logic, still, of a parent losing a son in his prime, or rather just before his prime? <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is. But it extends far beyond me too. We\u2019re all feeling it in the ennui of 2022, post-pandemic (kinda), post-Trump (kinda), post-analog world, post unconnected world. The frenzy of 24\/7 news and communication and being is getting to us all, and it\u2019s not all bad, just mostly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I\u2019m so busy, and everyone is in crisis. I have trouble justifying that selfish indulgence of long form reading as a regular part of life. But I worry as I skate along the surfaces of distractions that I am cutting myself off from hope, from possible immersion in that very thing that will cure me, that will help me find solace and understanding and calm\u2014if only through transport to another place, not one of my own creation, a place that can provide healthier \u201cdistraction\u201d in realms of greater possibility, where some unseen core of truth or energy will give us something essential for health and hope and joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I worry about my inability, our society\u2019s inability, our youths\u2019 inability, to carve out that slow pace, that shutting down, that putting on blinders that is reading. And without reading, I fear for the sanity and peace of the future world. Why can\u2019t we turn away, shut out the outside world, and transport ourselves into that place, whatever\/wherever it is, and however created by an author, and let that author and that world carry us along?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I bring this up during my deep dive, maybe halfway into the oeuvre of Margaret Atwood\u2014not in books, but via Audible. So, the novels are being consumed, and at a relatively good rate, but not by reading, sitting, and being alone and focused solely on the book. There\u2019s no underlining in ink. No pausing. No reflection, note-taking, and writing. So, it\u2019s a different experience\u2014again, not wholly negative, or deficient. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If I\u2019m ever to leave this new \u201creading\u201d experience (and of course that day is coming, but no need to be morose or lugubrious about it), I\u2019ll miss the performance<\/em> aspect of the reader. Such pleasure in the human voice telling us a story. Such pleasure in the intonations, the singing, the sound effects, the interpretations. We\u2019ve always had artists putting their stamps on a literary work, when, say the work is translated from the page onto the screen in a movie adaptation, for instance. But there, the interpretive license went too far, sometimes giving directors and other creators too much<\/em> license to remake the work in their own image. With an Audible book, the interpretation is fully constrained to the author\u2019s words<\/em>, and the interpretation becomes only an enhancement, not a divergence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was consuming Virginia Woolf on Audible, it was the breathy and beautiful Nicole Kidman who enchanted me through To the Lighthouse<\/em>, and then it was the less-breathy, but equally enchanting and beautiful Annette Benning taking me through Mrs. Dalloway<\/em>. I got to know these readers \u2026 through their intelligent interpretations, their miraculously deft performances\u2014and my heart swelled with such gratitude. Thank you for doing this for me! Thank you for reading to me. Thank you for the simplicity and elegance of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But now I have a problem. I can\u2019t listen to Audible outside the car. I just can\u2019t do it. I can\u2019t hunker down, hour after hour, while at rest, and approximate the old routine of reading. My impatience and distraction and anxiety about \u201cthe impending\u201d (no noun to follow, just \u201cthe impending\u201d; that\u2019s what has kept me from the old way of reading)\u2014prevented me from listening, despite the profundity of my gratitude. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I should note an evolution in my Audible life which began last summer with Virginia Woolf. I read my Audible Woolfs, dare I say, on the treadmill<\/em> (that just sounds wrong) this past summer, when I had time [cough, excuse] to exercise. Now, <\/em>however, I listen to Audible solely in the car, where fortunately (?), I find myself every day. On my daily commute, and even short errands, I find I am able focus on the words and story, almost fully, but certainly enough to be \u201ccarried along\u201d\u2014both by the story and by my auto-pilot driving. Is that auto-pilot phenomenon real? Should I trust it? I can\u2019t be sure\u2026. But where I am now \u2026 I need the car<\/em>; I need to be driving somewhere in order to read. It\u2019s both a pragmatic need, but also metaphorical for the simultaneous escape and purposefulness, or the not having to choose between them. Most of all, it\u2019s where I can give myself permission to \u201cdo nothing else\u201d but luxuriate in the possibility of an author\u2019s universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I said at the onset: I hope I it\u2019s temporary, my inability to read. I don\u2019t always want to be driving to read. And the pandemic, which confined me to the house for nearly two years showed me that all my travels, and thus all my books, may evaporate into the ether, without notice. Also, this long-form reading works well for novels\u2014but what about all the other kinds of reading I should return to? Philosophy? Meh, I guess I could do without philosophy; non-fiction works fine on Audible. Maybe I shouldn\u2019t panic \u2026 about everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this week, Atwood recommended against panic. As she accepted the Hutchins Prize (a bit of news I read, alas, old school\/new school, as one of those Apple News distractions on my phone): \u201c[D]esperate times require desperate remedies, and our times are desperate. However, instead of all these chariots and swords<\/a>, I\u2019ll propose something simpler. Don\u2019t panic. Think carefully. Write clearly. Act in good faith. Repeat.\u201d And so I will, but with a voice in my ear and a going someplace, at least for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Or Eat Sitting Down, When Alone; Spoiler: It\u2019s About Panic] I hope it\u2019s temporary, my inability to read. Rather, I should call it my disability in reading. I\u2019m actually reading much more perhaps than ever before, since it\u2019s all the time. But it\u2019s so fragmented and erratic. I read news stories, alerts, tweets, threads, threads, threads. It\u2019s … Continue reading Why I Can\u2019t Read Novels Anymore<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ang","category-just-life-in-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}