Reading Deep: It's not always the right thing to do

I began this blog with a reflection on reading deep as a way I have learned to approach a text (sometimes). But having spent a fair amount of time in grad schools as well, I know how to look at a book or article, decide what its structure is and then blow through it efficiently. The reminder that comes with this story is that “efficiently” isn’t always the right value and it doesn’t always relate just to the text.

Very soon after I met Bette, she showed me a book she was interest in. It was Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. It didn’t look like too tough a book to me, so I asked to see it. I looked at the structure and saw that his one idea was contained in the first chapter (there are “five languages of love” and that he dealt with those languages at a rate of one per chapter. So I spent a few minutes, my new lady friend of only a few weeks was looking over my shoulder, and got the ideas in Chapter 1. Then I turned the pages over as fast as I comfortably could. just verifying that they said what I was pretty sure they were going to say. They did.

So I sat back and expounded to Bette what was in this book. She was impressed, but she wasn’t pleased. It took me a day or so to figure out why. I had treated lightly a book that was about something that mattered to her. I didn’t even notice. I was busy showing off.

Then I did something I am still proud of. I asked to borrow the book for a few days and I gave it a really thorough reading. We still use that book, although I think it means more to me than it does to Bette. The way Chapman defines “languages” is a little soft; almost arbitrary. But the point he has in mind is that if you are trying to communicate to your wife, it is probably a good idea to use the language she understands best.
This is Bette in front of her favorite bookstore in The Dalles, Oregon, by the way.

To tell you the truth, I’d be more likely to choose the language I was most fluent in. Wouldn’t you? The five are: 1) words of affirmation, 2) quality time, 3) receiving gifts, 4) acts of service, and 5) physical touch. “Words of affirmation’ comes easiest to me and it is my own favorite—it is the language I always hear best. “Acts of service” is Bette’s favorite. I was very very surprised. But the fact is, when I want to tell her how important to me she is and how very much I cherish her, “doing things for her” is the way I can say that so that she will hear it best.

In Chapman’s five chapters of explication, there is not a single surprising episode. but if you read them all, carefully, you will have acquired a lot of little clues about how best to say the things that matter most.

I still like efficient reading. But if I had to choose between that and emphasizing a valuable and affirming common interest between my wife and me…I think efficiency can find its own way home.

Reading Deep

I'm reasonably sure that "reading deep" is what I want to say and not "reading deeply." There may be a little of Alexander Pope in there as in, "drink deep or touch not the Pierian spring." In any case, I'm probably right and even if I'm not, I can probably justify it at least partially, and even if I can, I like "deep" better.

I'm going to take a breath now.

Everyone who has ever really studied literature has learned ways of deep or "analytical" study. It's a way of getting deep into a piece of literature--into its "essence," you might say. But that's not what I'm talking about. I have two things in mind, both simple.

The first is to contrast reading deep with shallow reading. I mean to imply no value judgments here, but the truth of the matter is that a person who has read 20 books, once each, has had a different reading experience that has a person who has read 5 books, four times each. I do read a lot of different books, but I also read particular books over and over: Lord of the Rings, The Lathe of Heaven, Gaudy Night, Bedtime For Frances.

And why do I do that? This is the second simple thing I had in mind. I read a book the first time taking not very much for granted. It's all new to me. But you can't read a book for the first time twice and if you have ever tried to do that--to experience again that initial burst of novelty--you will agree with me. The second time, you begin by taking some things for granted. The part of the text you actually rub up against is the second layer. You're "in" the first layer and you are contacting the second layer.

But it's not the second layer "of the text." At least it's not for me. It's the second layer of things that come to my attention. If a given passage is seven layers deep (and I'm counting "layers away from me, so layers of infrastructure are layers and layers of superstructure are layers also) then the second time I read it, I presume the things I learned the first time and puzzle about the things that are new to me. The third time, I presume the first two and my attention is drawn to the new things.

Word rant: Why don't we just say infrastructure and ultrastructure if we want to use that set of substructure and superstructure if we want to use that series? Why do we have to mix them by choosing the more familiar one of each pair?

So if I follow my own curiosity, rather than, say, any intention the author might have had, reading deep takes me to fascinating places that are not available to anyone on one reading and were not available to me, either, on the first reading. The simple truth is that if you can't read a book twice, then it's a different book every time you read it.

I got to thinking about this in the early 1980s when I was taken with The French Lieutenant's Woman. It was an interesting story, but there was something suggested but not revealed (to me) about the woman. What was it about her? I read it seven times in a row, feeling all the time that I was getting closer to the answer I had "sensed." I got it on the sixth reading and read it the seventh time just to make sure everything worked with that in mind. The French Lieutenant's Woman was a modern woman and knew it. That's what her crime was. That's why she would rather be thought a whore than to have it known who she was.

If there are "right answers" to quests like this one (doubtful), I'd have to say I have no idea if this is one. I am quite sure that the answer I came to is the one I sensed on the first reading and finally put a name to on the penultimate reading. It was the right answer to the question I had been asking. Of course, I didn't know what the question had been either, until I found the answer.

The reason for this post at this time is that I was reminded of "reading deep" by my recent experience with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I had read it once before, I think, but last month I went on a P & P tear and read it four times. Not all of it four times. I scanned it all looking for what I was curious about. Then I scanned the parts I was curious about to see if I could say what I was seeing.

Here's what I came up with. For those of you who actually know the Austen corpus this may be beyond trite, but I discovered it myself so I get to plant the flag in the sand and claim it. There is a good deal of very funny prose in P & P. When I came face to face with how much I disliked Elizabeth's mother, I came to a new appreciation of her father, Mr. Bennet. Here is one that made me laugh out loud. Mrs. Bennet says, "Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? (by refusing to pay a call on a new gentleman in the area). You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves." To which Mr. Bennet replies, "You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least."

When I began to look for lines with that perverted puckish sense, I found a lot of them. But then I found that she doesn't use that language when she's busy developing plot. If the plot can be said to have periods of description and development and periods of climax, this language I like so much is in the development parts.

It isn't all that much of a realization, but I had to go deep to find it, which means I had to respect my own curiosity (and withstand the routine and good-natured abuse of others) over a number of readings. I found the process very satisfying and the result very satisfying as well.

But...you can't read everything deeply and still read a lot of books. So I read broadly as well.