The Art of Reading

Reading or the enjoyment of books has always been regarded among the charms of a cultured life and is respected and envied by those who rarely give themselves that privilege.  This is easy to understand when we compare the difference between the life of a man who does no reading and that of a man who does.  The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space.  His life falls into a set routine, he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighborhood.  From this prison there is no escape.  But the moment he takes up a book, he enters a different world and if it is a good book, he comes in contact with the best talkers of the world.  This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the leaders know nothing about.

The readers are always carried away into a world of thought and reflection.  Even if it is a book about physical events, there is a difference between seeing such events in person or living through them, and reading about them in books, for them the events always assume the quality of a spectacle and the reader becomes a detached spectator.  The best reading is therefore that which leads us into this contemplative mood and that which is merely occupied with the report of events.

A scholar who hasn’t read anything for three days feels that his talk has no flavor (becomes insipid) and his own face becomes hateful to look at (in the mirror).  Reading gives a man certain charm and flavor, which is the main aim of reading and only reading with this aim can be called an art.  One doesn’t read to improve ones mind because when one begins to think of improving his min, all the pleasures of reading is gone.

Anyone who reads a book with sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.  This type of reading with a business purpose is no way different from a senators reading up of files and reports before he makes a speech.  Reading for the cultivation of personal charm of appearance and flavor in speech is the only admissible kind of reading.  This charm of appearance must evidently be interpreted as something other than physical beauty.  There are ugly faces that have a fascinating charm and beautiful faces that are insipid to look at.

This is what I would call a beautiful face, a face not made up by powder and rouge, but by the sheer force of thinking.  As for flavor of speech, it all depends on one way’s of reading. Whether one has “flavor” or not in his talk, depends on his method of reading.  If the reader gets the flavor of the books, he will show that flavor in his conversations, and if he has flavor in his conversation, he cannot help also having flavor in his writings.

Hence I consider flavor or taste as the key to all reading.  It necessary follows that taste is selective and individual like the taste for food.  The most hygienic way of eating is, after all, eating what one likes, for than one is sure of digestion.  In reading, as it is eating what is one man’s meat may be another man’s poison.  A teacher cannot force his pupils to like what he likes in reading and a parent cannot expect his children to have the same tastes as themselves.  And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted.  You can leave the books that you don’t like alone, and let other people read them.

There can be, therefore no books that one absolutely must read. For our intellectual interests grow like a tree or flow like a river.  So long there is a proper sap, the tree will grow any how, and as long as there is fresh current from the spring, the water will flow.  When water strikes a granite cliff, it just goes around it, when it finds itself in a pleasant low valley, it stops and meanders there a while; when it finds itself in a deep mountain pond, it is content to stay there; when it finds itself travelling over rapids, it hurries forward.  Thus without any effort or determined aim, it is sure of reading the sea some day.  There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life.

Even if there is a certain book that everyone must read, like the bible, there is time for it.  When one’s thoughts and experience have not reached a certain point for reading a master piece, the master piece will leave only a bad flavor on his plate.

The same reader reading the same book at difference periods gets a different flavor out of it. All books can be read with profit and renewed pleasure a second time. Reading therefore, is an act consisting of two sides, the author and the reader.  The net gain comes as much from the reader’s contribution through his own insight and experience as from the authors own.

One has to independent and search out his masters who is one’s favorite author, no one can tell, probably not even the man himself.  It is like love at first sight.  The reader cannot be told to love this one or that one, but when he has found the author he loves, he knows it himself by a kind of instinct.

The true art of reading is to just take up a look and read when the mood comes.  To be thoroughly enjoyed, reading must be entirely spontaneous.  Between reading, a good pipe or a good cup of tea makes it still more perfect.  Reading a banned book behind closed doors on a snowy night is one of the greatest pleasures of life.The good reader tolerates misprints when reading history as a good traveler, tolerates bad roads when climbing a mountain, one going to watch a snow scene tolerates a flimsy bridge, one choosing to live in the country tolerates vulgar people and one bent on looking at flowers tolerates bad wind.