It was a pleasure to burn it was a special pleasure to see things eaten to see things blackened and changed with the brass nozzle in his fists with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world the blood pounded in his head and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history with his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.
And - breathe.
How quickly can you devour a book? If you are reading something at the same time as someone else, do you feel an unspoken pressure to be the first to finish; to show that you can consume the most amount of content in the least amount of time? Do you consider yourself the consummate reader for being able to finish a book in a few days, or perhaps a week if it's heavier tome?
How quickly can you devour a book? If you are reading something at the same time as someone else, do you feel an unspoken pressure to be the first to finish; to show that you can consume the most amount of content in the least amount of time? Do you consider yourself the consummate reader for being able to finish a book in a few days, or perhaps a week if it's heavier tome?
I know, without a doubt, that you are out there, my friends. And that you secretly revel in the art of your speed read.
For I am one of you.
And I have experienced the showdown of a silent speed read, eyes and printed word, mind and internally whispered word barely touching fingertips as you race to the end of the page, then wait smugly, casually for your contender to finish.
Putting articles to one side, let's focus on the reading of fiction; the picking up of a book, or e-reader, in which a writer has built a world and story through their words, and put those words in your hands to be read and absorbed. If you've experienced "that deeply intimate bond made when a writer's voice gets inside a reader's head" (Julian Barnes, A Life with Books) then presumably you've experienced what it is to lose yourself in a written world, and become intimately acquainted with its populace.
Putting articles to one side, let's focus on the reading of fiction; the picking up of a book, or e-reader, in which a writer has built a world and story through their words, and put those words in your hands to be read and absorbed. If you've experienced "that deeply intimate bond made when a writer's voice gets inside a reader's head" (Julian Barnes, A Life with Books) then presumably you've experienced what it is to lose yourself in a written world, and become intimately acquainted with its populace.
This is one of the joys of reading fiction. Much as a film pulls you into a story, so too does a (good) book, whether a simple piece read to pass the time, a classic, a dystopia to learn about the perils of today, anything. And, "the true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can." (C S Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism). To absorb yourself, you find yourself unconsciously tuning out the world around you, what you are hearing, touching, smelling. The ink (or pixels) on the page become a gateway to the writer, with each word and punctuation mark deliberately chosen by them to describe, 'work out loud', share the world that has emerged within their own minds.
And yet, I often find myself guilty of speed reading my way through. Of ignoring the rhythm with which the writer has written, skimming over the words that they - and their copyeditor - have undoubtedly pained and fretted over. The experience often becomes one of impressions, where you get a blurred feel for the story, rather than a sharp focus on the voice of the writer.
The paragraph at the top of this post. Here it is again, with Ray Bradbury's punctuation and paragraphing included (taken from the first page of Fahrenheit 451). Read each word, feel each comma, and hear the words spoken in your mind, as though being read to you by someone else, read with a passion and with emotion, with music in their voice. Resist the urge to skip or skim words, to get to the end of the italicised text as quickly as possible.
It was a pleasure to burn.
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and charged. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the sky red and yellow and black.
The pace of reading, compared to the first paragraph, is tangible. The impact on the feeling it makes considerable. The story emerges in full technicolour, with its sounds, smells, colours. You can feel the sharp coldness of the brass nozzle, see the numbers '451' etched into the helmet, hear the flames erupt around the house.
And that is the art of the slow read. For those of us used to speed reading, it is an art that we often have to consciously remind ourselves to do, and to practice. To battle against the urge to finish the book as quickly as possible at our own pace, and to have the pace dictated to us by the writer instead. To feel each word as a connoisseur of art feels each brush stroke, or of wine feels each subtle taste, or of music feels each layered instrument's timbre and each note's resonance. And to lose ourselves in amongst the ink and paper (... or pixels and hardware) for a little longer that we would have otherwise done.
