Unabridged Opinions

The title above links to a fun, short, blog post on how to read, basically, a book a day. Well, it’s not “how-to”–more of a “how she”. And, really, a “how-I”.
When students, and friends, ask me how I read so much (it usually comes up when they see me packing for vacation–I have been known to bring only one pair of shoes in order to have more room for books), I usually just answer “I’ve been doing it awhile; I’ve had a lot of practice.” But, when a particularly suspicious friend (he didn’t believe that I was “really” reading) observed me for a time, he drew the same conclusion that Sarah Weinman did about her own reading, I seemed to scan the page in chunks instead of line by line. I hear the dialogue, and see the settings, very vividly–I just see them very quickly. They are not rushed in my head, and I rarely feel that I am missing something. In fact, I usually only feel as if I am skimming when I am forcing myself to finish a book and don’t want to be paying complete attention anyway.
This talent, or freakish ability, came in handy at university. Since most of my coursework involved reading, and I could read quickly, I never felt as stressed out by it as some of my friends. And, because I can generally remember a book quite well, it also helped to speed through paper-writing when I would be able to find a quote/example quickly.
Other than that though? And using it as a party trick to get my students to read? I’ve never felt that it was that impressive a skill. Trust me, if you had asked my seventh grade self whether I wanted to be able to read that fast or make sense of social relationships I would have chose…the reading one, but there would have been a pause while I considered what it would be like to be able to make sense of interactions outside of books.
Occasionally though, when I’m re-reading a book, I love the fact that reading this fast gives me enough time to read new books I’m interested in and old books I love. Right now, I’m on my seventh book of the new year (although six of them are re-reads of Agatha Christie and P.C. Hodgell), so I’m right on track to keep on reading.

I’ve worked, well, forever, it feels like. Certainly since the moment I was old enough to have a work-permit from school. I was a waitress, a cafeteria manager, a horseback riding trainer, a teacher, and an editor. So, now, to be without a job–it feels odd. I’ve noticed, though, that getting a job in my new country may not be the easiest task. Especially in the current economic climate, the general feeling is one of “this is going to take awhile”, and, even if my possibly-future employers didn’t have to call the U.S. to contact my references, I think it would be a difficult bet. I’m starting to worry that I won’t find a job anywhere because, as varied as my resume is, it doesn’t actually apply that well to the current UK job market.
Obviously, this is partially an excuse to swan around reading books and playing Oblivion, but I’ve also never not had a job while searching for my next job. Somehow, it’s easier to update your resume if you are doing it covertly on the computers of the business you are trying to flee. Misery, obviously, makes me work harder. And I’m not miserable. I love being married. I love swanning around reading and playing video games. I know, though, that I also need to work and have something to do, so I am slowly getting my resume together and trying to figure out what to do next. So far? I have a list that consists of: not teach (teaching, at least at a public school in the US, made me angry–not at the students but at the situation that teachers and students alike were forced to view as status quo), work with animals, work with adult learners, work at cool company, edit books, read, horseback ride. Obviously, the idea of reading for a living and horseback riding are hold-outs from my pre-teen years, but when you have to freedom to look around and move slowly? Who knows what will happen.

At college, I once had a (rather drunk) acquaintance of mine explain, very carefully and in great detail, why there were no coincidences in life. It was a lengthy monologue, but the basic gist was that the human mind creates connections in order to comfort itself in the vast, random, emptiness that is life. (He was more cheerful when not at a party). If he had asked, I would have told him that I did not see coincidences as some magical sign from above, but I did know that I was impressed by the human mind’s ability to find connections between actions, events, and objects that seemed both disparate and completely distinct. My own mind, especially, seems to enjoy seeking out the smallest connection and coincidences and musing on them (as my beleaguered high school writing teacher realized when I turned in an essay comparing Macbeth to Michael Milkin and the S&L scandal). Recently, while reading C.S. Lewis’ “Space Trilogy” (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength), my mind became busy making connections with a speaker I had recently heard, the psychotherapist and author Adam Phillips.

Not only did the talk I attended speak to the idea, and place, of science and its relationship with the world and literature (a major theme/concern in the series), but a series of short essays that Phillips presented on BBC 3 last week discussed the human inclination to excess (a topic lengthily discussed in Perelandra). It fascinates me to be able to, in effect, listen to a conversation between two very intelligent men who are separated by decades. Their goals are quite different. Lewis, unabashedly, seeks to convert his readers to his beliefs (in God, in the importance of good in the world, in humankind’s ability to work for the betterment of all) while Phillips desires, I think, to understand what is going on, to get to the why of humanities’ actions.

They ask similar questions, though. Why does man feel this need to eat/sleep/work/exercise to excess? Lewis seems to suggest that man is trying to hold on to pleasure–that the eating over and over again of food is an attempt to re-create the pleasure of the first encounter with the food. That mankind always wants too much of a good thing because of a desire to have the same experience of pleasure over and over again. An attempt to re-create the very first source of pleasure, Eden, in fact. This goal is of course doomed, as Adam was doomed. Lewis’ answer to excess is the realization that the only true place perfection (and re-creation) can be found is with God and the church. That mankind can never find solace and salvation through striving for more and must look to God instead.

Phillips seems to look for a concrete and “modern” why and suggests that mankind does to excess to fill some sort of lack. That eating to excess demonstrates an anxiety that food will not always be available. The idea that excess is a fun-house mirror reflection of a lack is satisfying because it implies that once that lack is filled, the excess will disappear. Oddly, this theory leaves me , at least, less satisfied than Lewis’ lost Eden. As far as I am from Lewis’ point of view, his certainty that Eden once existed (and that it can be found again only through God and not the efforts of man) is like a clear shining light in his writing. The very certainty that God will create a second Eden makes poetry of his arguments. Phillips, although intellectually satisfying, feels modern, Freudian, and ambiguous. The idea of the source of the excess, the void, somehow being resolved seems obvious, but it does not seem possible. What is the lack to be filled with in this day and age? And is it this struggle that has driven mankind to success in medicine and technology as well as its failures in wars and the poisoning of the environment? To recognize the void is not enough and indeed, without Lewis’ certainty that mankind will somehow be saved, seems frightening.