Reading

It’s Why We Read, Online and Off
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new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/opinion/l31reading.html

Published: July 31, 2008
To the Editor:

Jordan Awan
Related

The Future of Reading: Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? (July 27, 2008)
Re “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?” (“The Future of Reading” series, front page, July 27):

Most of us read all the time: road signs, recipes, people’s expressions. But sometimes reading is for purposes other than simply gaining information.
The teenagers mentioned in the article who eschew books in favor of online text may be well informed and may interact with others every day, but they lack the experience of “reading” that a literary narrative provides.
When reading is reduced to meaning only the acquisition of information, it is no surprise to find that minds are impoverished. Do you agree or disagree with “Jane Eyre”? With “Hamlet”? With “Their Eyes Were Watching God”? The question is meaningless, beside the point.
As more and more people fail to “read,” it becomes easier for the powerful to hoodwink them because extended narratives disappear, to be replaced by the quick conclusions available in a Google search. We no longer see that we are repeating old narratives, no longer see how we got to where we are.
To engage with democratic processes — to participate in making difficult decisions or answering challenging questions (shall we go to war? whose fault is poverty?) — requires the ability to examine multiple perspectives, to hold conflicting ideas simultaneously in the mind.
Such qualities of thought are practiced and honed by reading, not by scanning text for information.
As readers have become replaced by users, so our ability to understand what happens in our name will continue to be diminished.
Mark HusseyNyack, N.Y., July 27, 2008
The writer is a professor of English at Pace University.
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To the Editor:
I wonder if the invention of the printing press in 1440 had experts of the day crying out that reading and writing were dead.
Pleasure literacy, academic literacy, cultural literacy and informational literacy are all different genres, and we should welcome new sources with delight.
As a lifelong reader, writer and teacher, and now a technological neophyte, I am pleased to be able to find the information I need so easily and quickly on the Internet rather than spending hours in library stacks as I used to do.
Our young people are not in danger because they are experimenting with literacy in a new form.
So what if it obsesses them for the time being? That’s what adolescence is all about. In maturity, they will have skills, knowledge and interests their parents only dreamed about.
Joanne Yatvin Portland, Ore., July 27, 2008
The writer is a former president of the National Council of Teachers of English.
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To the Editor:
Show me the things on the Internet that compare with Sherlock Holmes’s deadly confrontation with Moriarty, the final scene with the titular spider in “Charlotte’s Web,” Winston Smith’s self-betrayal in “1984,” the brilliance of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels, the anger and the love and the sorrow of Harlan Ellison’s stories, the wordy mirth of Rex Stout’s brownstoned Nero Wolfe, Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld series, Tarzan, the Spenser mysteries, Roland of Gilead, Little Bear, Big Max, Martha and George. And that’s just one bookcase.
Show me humanity writ large on the Internet, and I’ll stop having any truck with these heavy, burdensome books.
Until then, please stop encouraging the endorsement of this “greasy kid’s stuff” as anything other than what it was described as in the article: an addiction. And an addiction, by definition, is not beneficial.
Alex Dering Princeton, N.J., July 27, 2008
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To the Editor:
I struggle mightily with the book versus digital reading issue. I see the view that reading is reading. I know our real and reading world has changed dramatically.
But reading a book — Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” Kate Chopin’s “Awakening” — is more of a lasting aesthetic experience than reading the Internet, which is a more ephemeral, economic lure.
Books ask us to pause, imagine, shush; the Internet says don’t think much, buy, rush.
So, yes, there’s a new kind of reader in town, but please give me Shakespeare and even Jonathan Swift now and forever, and let me take more time to decide on Internet swift.
Reading is reading is not always reading.
John Gabriel Chicago, July 27, 2008
The writer is the chairman of the teacher education department at DePaul University.
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To the Editor:
The crucial issue might not be how one reads (in print or online), but what one reads (something important or trivial).
It probably does not matter in what form one reads a “great book,” but time is more likely better spent with it than with a book or article of lesser significance.
But to read an important book is not enough. One should examine and understand it, assess its relevance and credibility, and then answer this question: What have I learned of value from it?
Brad Bradford Upper Arlington, Ohio, July 27, 2008
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To the Editor:
Is reading the nutrition information on a bag of potato chips “reading”? What about the box score for a Yankees game or closed captions on a TV program?
People have always been able to read in different media and circumstances. What’s important is the person’s purpose in reading, not the medium itself.
Are you looking for specific information, following a historical narrative or savoring the language in a Jane Austen novel?
There’s very little reading that can be done in one medium (the Internet) but not in the other (traditional print). The rest is all convenience.
It’s harder on the Internet to stumble on those small interesting stories in the back of a newspaper, but it’s easier to find specific facts. There’s no single answer to which is better, but it’s all good.
Mark Seidenberg Madison, Wis., July 29, 2008
The writer is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.