The Literary Present

If a person does not enjoy reading, like my "Larry," and there are many who do not, I have several ideas why this may be the case. Mostly they involve deprivation or illiterate or executive parents who worked too hard and late to read at night; the other possibility, I learned from Cathy, my old friend and college roommate, bless her, and her relationship with the TV. We got our first TV when I was 12 or so. I used to walk down the street in my PJ's at dawn to post up on our neighbor's couch and watch Looney Tunes, so it's not as though I was above it all--no, I was a ravenous, bedeviled fiend, waiting for any opportunity to inhale processed food and allow myself to melt into the stupefying tranquility of the TV's comforting static for hours. But when I couldn't do that, for inevitably I would get sent home to my brown rice and my bookshelf, I read and read, later wrote and drew pictures, and my imagination, with the backdrop of California woods, flourished. When I sat down to read a book then, as now, I see the landscape and characters come vividly into focus; a "movie" plays in my mind, some author's dream scape brought to life behind my eyes--it's why movies are generally disappointing if I've read the book. Many of you (well, all five people who will read this) will nod in agreement.

Cathy liked to have the TV on as background noise most of the time. I rarely like to have it on at all. I find the sound of commercials as soothing as being stalked by born-again collection agents. So, I'd walk through, ask if she was watching, get a "no," and kill the beast. And within a few minutes, I'd hear it again. Cathy and I were great roommates for many reasons but our comfortable stasis was rooted in our complementary talents. Both in school, I helped her edit her papers and was always throwing new vocabulary words her way. ( I can still see her asking me if something was "dynamic"--and she'd do the air quotes; Cath "loves" air quotes, and she can make them work for her like few people can). She, methodical and organized, helped me with Botany by making flashcards and other tasks my non-linear brain couldn't abide. One day, Cath told me a story about how, around age 12, she was chewing her way through some reading in the kitchen with her mom, and all of a sudden, a picture popped into her mind, just like it came straight from the words on the page. I think it was a wheelbarrow.

"I see it! Mom, I see it!" She exclaimed, startling her mother. What, Jesus in the maple syrup, what?

For the first time, she had the experience of developing a mental picture of what she was reading.

I was floored by this story. I had no idea that some people do not "see the picture" when they read. Considering that it's a big--though until then unconsidered--part of why reading is enjoyable, it had never occurred to me that one could read and it would be a one dimensional, unfruitful ordeal, like sweeping a clean floor. Then again, many claim that math speaks to them with resounding clarity, the "music of numbers" or some such miraculous claim...but it was the first time I got that not all brains are built the same. I tell this story every year. I ask my kids, "Who sees the picture?" Less than half the class will raise a hand, only half of these do it with real confidence and genuine surprise when they see the variation, at which point it's too late to take back if your soul mate sees the world with math-eyes. I ask then how many of these kids read or were read to as children. The hands stay up, almost universally. Do they read still? Yes, mostly. Has school killed reading for them? Yeah, sometimes. "The books suck." But these are the kids who read in the class, and with a few exceptions, they are the writers as well. They see, and thus can create, the picture.


The rest of the lecture is not all mine--when teaching things that matter, they rarely come exclusively from the teacher; ironically, we are the greatest plagiarists of all--but it sticks because it is simple and true. I draw a triangle on the board, and each of the sides has arrows pointing both ways. Each of the points is labeled: you, text, author. I ask them what it means.


Math-eyes get it first: "There is a relationship between all these points?"


Yes, they are all accessible via each other. The author, in other words, is telling you something through the text. When you respond, in reading, writing or even thinking, you are responding to the author through the text or the text through the author. Then I draw a box and a stick figure sitting in a chair, with a line and arrow pointing at the sitting figure. This is TV. I ask, "What is the difference in this relationship?"

The difference is the picture. The text adds a new angle, if not a new dimension. One is forced to create the picture mentally when it is not provided; to visualize the landscape, characters, and minute detail, with the brilliant subconscious palate we all possess, but which many of us have filed away in lieu of technicolor or blueray or whatever it is these days. Thus, watching TV is an act of passive absorption, while reading, though solitary and mostly still, is an active process of creation and communication. It literally flexes your cerebral muscle, strengthens it, allows more oxygen to flow there; watching TV makes your brain switch hemispheres from the left (logic, critical thought) to the right (emotion), where it will release pleasurable endorphins that can lead to a physical addiction--an addiction, which (like most prolonged substance abuse) can markedly lower your intelligence. One hemisphere of the brain is not "better" than the other; we need both to survive. But one is more animalistic and less discerning. This is also not to say you cannot learn anything from TV or that highly intelligent people don't create what you see on TV, but the point is, when you are watching it, you aren't creating anything. Except perhaps a more generous posterior.

When you watch the same TV show, you say, Man, that was funny (sick, stoopid, unbelievable). But when you find you have read the same book with someone, it can be like this:

You have both, miraculously, visited (at a different time, though perhaps the same season--bright, cold spring?) the same tiny, Alsatian village--easy to miss on the map. Somehow, you both found yourselves lugging your filthy back pack to the same patisserie to get something to eat before the next train, though it seemed unlikely that anything would be open. With luck, a light shone, and you both--unbelievable--had what was fresh from the oven, warm pain chocolat, served to you by a sunbrown, sad-eyed, elderly man who said only please like it was a question and thank you you like it was an answer. You noticed, as you bit into those warm layers of pastry, sad with the first bite that you'd never taste this again, that there was a meticulously dusted and lovingly framed photograph of a beautiful woman behind the register, near a vase of fresh, red tulips. The difference between us is that I was certain, as I walked away, that this was his wife, lost to cancer far too young (it explains the sad eyes). You, though, thought it was his mother, a widow herself who left her only son this bakery--he never married--this also explains the sad eyes. We both buy more pain chocolat, which even an hour later will not taste the same, and make the next train to the next, bigger pinpoint on the map.


It's in the picture, the interpretation. It is mine, but also yours. The greatest of solitary activities, it brings us closer together in understanding, empathy, those waning resources. And, unlike the fleeting moments of our lives, books can be picked up and revisited with vivid clarity when we need. I recall a teacher saying to a student when I was training to be a teacher and felt, of course, like I had "FRAUD" across my forehead in neon lights: "You must, _________, remain in the literary present." I nodded with fearful authority (Why did I major in anthropology?!) and ran to look it up. I don't even remember what it means, but I tell students my version of it all the time:

"When you write about literature, do it in the present tense."

"Why?"

Because, I now say with my own assurance. In books, it is always the present. It does not become "the past" because you have finished reading the book. The image will jump right off the page at you as vigorously as always it did, and you will always wrestle with it and think you can affect the outcome. In the blur of life's sickening pace, books contain us and can be counted on. Pick one up, even the ones from high school "that sucked" (they probably didn't). Rose of Sharon will still lose that baby and nurse a dying old man from her breast. Romeo and Juliet will still royally butcher their chances at happiness. Anna will still end up under that train. Gatsby will still stand at the end of that dock reaching eternally for that elusive green light. And you'll still have hope, even if you know the end, because the literary present brings us right there, always. It's a great...comfort.



The world of course takes all kinds of people, and some of our most symbiotic relationships can be with those people with whom we share not identical, but complimentary talents. It is these people who can teach us the most, who with their difference can lead us to new parts of ourselves. Larry, whose "math eyes" gleam like a man at the races each morning as he watches the flickering green and red grid-scape of the stock market ("Look babe, here it comes, the market's opening--it's alive!" he'll say, giddy at 6:30 am) is teaching me the beauty of spreadsheets--dubious--but at least the beauty of growth in terms of bank accounts and gardens. TV has the unfair advantage already when it comes to luring in devotees at a green age, and his predilection towards reading was additionally weakened by the fact that he was allowed to start driving when he was something like 9 years old--what can compete with that-- but I have faith in the right book. This is our literary present.