Those who write about sex or money-making often give the impression that it is the whole of life. I do not want to give a similar impression about reading, but I do want to persuade you that it is a substantial part of the life of reason. (Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book)
I am a publisher by trade. I earn my bread as editor-in-chief of Cluny Media. I read a lot of books. I read a lot of books from cover to cover. I read even more books not from cover to cover, but from their beginnings to somewhere that feels like the points have been made and the gist has been grasped.
I say this not to brag but only to make a point. There inevitably comes a moment when a man just gets tired of reading all the time. And he decides he would like to do some of the writing for a change. That man is me. Thus, in the fall of 2022, no longer content to publish only the writings of others, I started Lord of Indiscipline as a means of publishing my own.
Only time will tell if this project has the reach to meet my grasp. My last attempt at consistent extra-curricular writing was my elementary-school journal. When I was eight, my parents directed me and my siblings to keep a basic chronicle of life’s happenings as well as sundry personal musings. My journal entries, such as I recall, mostly involved the former: what I had eaten that day, how went the Wiffleball game between myself and my brother, what small success I obtained in school, what comical antics my younger siblings provided for my entertainment, and so forth. Taken altogether, the journal—if it survives—would defy categorization and hardly recommend me as a writer whose work is worth heeding.
My participation in that journaling experiment only lasted a year; never since then have I resumed journaling or any other consistent writing endeavors outside of the copywriting shop at Cluny. But I have never stopped reading. And because of the nature of my work (i.e., its reliance on other people reading), I’m highly motivated to see clearly and think critically about the topic of literature. So much so that I’m going to start writing about it, among other worthwhile things. So I have high hopes that this newslettering experiment will far exceed the journaling in both quality and longevity. Those hopes are bolstered by my belief that small actions can lead to great outcomes. In What About Bob? (the best movie of the 1990s, bar none), Bob Wiley is “a multi-phobic personality, characterized by acute separation anxiety, and extreme need for family connections.” His psychiatrist, Dr. Leo Marvin, counsels Bob to embrace Baby Steps, the setting of small, reasonable goals for oneself, as the means to breaking out of psychosomatic paralysis.
The first small step, for myself, in pursuit of clear thinking and truthful writing, is to keep away from social media as much as possible. Nicholas Carr’s remark—about the internet in general but apropos of social media in particular—is sufficient motivation thereto.
It does not force anything upon you. Only it turns out it doesn’t feel like that at all. We don’t feel as if we had freely chosen our online practices. We feel instead that they are habits we have helplessly picked up or that history has enforced, that we are not distributing our attention as we intend or even like to…
If nothing else, an absence from social media can force, by pure necessity, a reckoning with freedom. Now that I can’t flick through Twitter, what can I do? I can read a book with no—okay, less—distraction. Baby steps.
For the reading does do something for me. Not just the reading, of course. Parents used to say (and maybe some still do), “As long as they’re reading!” Their progeny could be reading The Golden Compass or Percy Jackson or Hunger Games or Holes for the hundredth time. It didn’t matter what they were reading; the only thing that mattered was that they were reading. As a child, I didn’t have this problem; I read well in the same way that a child whose mother is a good cook (and my mother is) eats well: that child is hungry; his mother gives him food; the food is good; he eats it; he becomes what he eats. I was hungry for literature because every child is hungry for literature. I was hungry; my parents gave me books; the books were good; I read them; I became what I read. Or better put, since I was and am not anything resembling a paragon of virtue, my imagination became what I read. My imagination became good in the technical sense. As you would say of Dennis Rodman, “He’s good,” meaning that he had the skill of a good basketball player, so you could say of me, “He’s good,” meaning that I had the skill of a good imagination.
But is imagination simply a matter of technical functionality? Can imaginative practice make imaginative perfection? The apparent answer certainly seems to be no, because if it was yes, then surely the evidence of social outcome via increased literacy levels, virtuous citizenry, happy childhoods, etc., would bear out that affirmation.
Yet the basic point about what begins to make a child imaginative strikes me as intuitive. If, as we begin the habit of reading, the what we read is basically good, then it seems that we will go on to “read good and do other stuff good too.” But if, as we start reading, the what is—forget outright wicked—banal, stupid, gross, nonsensical, then it seems we will go on to read that way too, even if we manage not to become that way too deeply. This is not to say that what and how we read as children will be the one and only what and how of our reading ’til death do us part. But it seems uncontroversial and—again—intuitive, to say that what and how we read as children will orient our imaginations and interests in particular directions.
At least, it was uncontroversial and intuitive until I picked up Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book. The great Adler, curiously enough, has little to say about how children read, let alone how they ought to read. His audience is readers as such, not the first-teachers-of-readers, otherwise known as parents. This book, he writes, “is for adults who have gradually become aware of how little they got from all their schooling, as well as for those who, lacking such opportunities, have been puzzled to know how to overcome a deprivation they need not regret too much. It is for students at school and college who may occasionally wonder how to help themselves to education. It is even for teachers who may sometimes realize that they are not giving all the help they should, and that perhaps they do not know how.”
Obviously, and by necessity, How to Read a Book presumes literacy; it presumes you, the reader, already know how to read a book. You just don’t know how to read well. The book can teach you that, can lead you into the ways of “intelligent reading.” Here is Adler on the “honest function” of a teacher:
A teacher functions honestly only if he does not aggrandize himself by coming between the great books and their young readers. He should not “come between” as a non-conductor, but he should come between as a mediator—as one who helps the less competent make more effective contacts with the best minds.
Curiouser and curiouser. I’m curious as to what and how these “young readers” were reading before they were in secondary school. Adler calls these readers “less competent”—which is to say they are competent, at least to the degree necessary for engaging with the Great Books. Like a pilot bringing a ship into harbor, the teacher can assume the ship’s captain (the reader) is capable of steering the ship (reading the book), perhaps even of bringing it safely into harbor (understanding the book), and that all by himself. Still, the pilot’s role is a crucial one. Without it, fresh contact with those “best minds” will yield less-than-ideal, “less effective,” outcomes.
Again, to my original curiosity: Given that the original what (e.g., Paddington Bear vs. Diary of Wimpy Kid) that children read or have read to them forms the how of their adolescent and adult reading, what was reading like for Adler’s students before they were students? In other words, were children in illo tempore following an established and efficacious rule for reading that produced in them the habits necessary to matriculate to the kind of intelligent reading, to the deft practice of the art of reading, such as Adler has in mind?
For Adler, at least from my recent cursory reading of the opening three chapters of How to Read a Book, the answer to those questions is quite clear: No. Kids those days—just like kids these days—didn’t know how to read. They had no expertise in the art of reading. Literate dust in earthen vessels, but dust all the same—for their “literacy” is directed primarily toward the first two of the kinds of reading that Adler points out: information and entertainment, but not understanding.
While Adler doesn’t make that point explicitly, it seems fair to draw the inference; for who among us would (truthfully) say that their child reads Corduroy for understanding? Even more to the point, when we, the adults, give Corduroy to the child, are we doing so with the intention of increasing her understanding of some truth? Or are we doing so to give her a means to pass the time, to find entertainment in the amalgam of words that is the account of a department-store bear and his first home? Adler quotes Jacques Barzun, who knew a thing or two about of reading and writing, on this point. To the American boast of having the most literate population in the world, Barzun retorts: “Literacy in this sense is not education; it is not even ‘knowing how to read’ in the sense of taking in quickly and correctly the message of the printed page, to say nothing of exercising a critical judgment upon it.”
This point is, of course, very compelling. Adler is good that way. His arguments are difficult to argue against, his conclusions difficult to dismiss, his observations about the state of mis-education impossible to ignore. And yet the absence of attention to the primordial stage of literacy is discomfiting. The child, as Wordsworth so aptly said, “is the father of the man.” How, then, do we account for Adler’s apparent neglect of the childhood stage of literacy in such a grand plan for developing good readers?
The answer which immediately came to mind? Adler is deferential to the power of subsidiarity and the limits of capacity. First, subsidiarity. Adler isn’t concerned with what and how children are reading when they first begin to read because it isn’t his responsibility; it’s the family’s. “Reading,” he writes in his Preface, “is a basic tool in the living of a good life. I need not defend the goodness of living humanly or reasonably.” What else is the mission of the family if not to provide its children with the means of living a good life?
And besides, from the purely pragmatic perspective, how could an educator or education system, guarantee the provision of basic literacy? Every family is different—different in background, in temperament, and in talent. Developing healthy literary habits and all their attendant skills in children at their early stages—say toddler through second grade—across all these varying conditions: talk about a completely impracticable proposition. Best leave them to their own devices in the early years to pick up the necessary, rudimentary skills of reading and learning, and we’ll get down to business properly once they hit the age of schooling.
Second, capacity. Adler isn’t concerned with what and how children are reading because, until they reach a certain level of age and maturity, they aren’t reading the Great Books, which is one of, if not the only, terminus point of literacy—albeit one, by Adler’s admission, that the reader is never fully equipped to perform and accomplish. As children, they simply read as children; even as they read wide-eyed with wonder, they see only a sliver of the spectacle. And that is perfectly acceptable. You gotta walk before you can run. In other words, don’t worry, kids: you’ll get there. And when you do, just be sure you’re literate.
I had those two answers down before I went in search of a (free) audiobook edition of How to Read a Book. The public library, unsurprisingly, doesn’t carry one. YouTube offers one, but it’s read by a robot. The next video in the channel was Adler’s appearance on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line in 1970. Thinking it the next best thing, and facing an hour-long drive, I started it.
It changed my mindset about the place of childhood reading in the Adlerian model. About midway through the interview, Adler is speaking to this very point about teaching someone to read. “You cannot,” he says, “teach a person to read well unless you—particularly if he has a fine intelligence to begin with, a native aptitude—unless you make him struggle with texts that are very difficult and over his head.” Buckley interjects: “At a very young age, or you mean…?” Adler’s answer:
That’s right. As he goes, as he, that is, the person who is reading, however widely it is, has dealt with readily intelligible stuff, stuff that he doesn’t have to struggle to master, struggle to understand, is a person whose mind will not be pulled up to its full capacity.… That’s the only reason for the great books, really.… I shouldn’t say that, the reason over and above their content is that it’s a sharpening stone, it’s something you have to sharpen your mind on.
This, frankly, puzzles me. If the answer ended at full capacity, I can see how it could be turned to address Buckley’s question about the “very young age” of the reader. And it would provide a clear angle of approach to the question of the what and how of childhood reading. Namely, that children ought to read material that is intelligible, but not readily so, and that is difficult to master, but not impossibly so. Given that, their minds could begin the difficult but heady ascent toward full capacity. Within that framework, even those parents lacking their own literary bent would be able, with the right resources, to instill in their children the beginnings of the talent of reading well.
But the added comment about the great books obscures this angle. It makes clear that he is talking, not about readers at a very young age, but readers at a very inexperienced age and with superficial literary talent. Moreover, it brings into sharp focus his fundamental vision of books: books are sharpening stones. Even a richer, more nuanced reading of “your mind” in the phrase, “something to sharpen your mind on,” one which would make us think not so much of our brain but of something more akin to our full and unfiltered worldview, doesn’t solve the issue. Sharpening stone leaves the metallic aftertaste of the technological in my mouth. Surely there is more to reading than simply exercise? The art of reading obviously involves strengthening and conditioning a certain muscle, but is it reducible to such?
Again, I want to give Adler the benefit of the doubt on this point. How to Read a Book is only one of his many books and the Firing Line interview above is but one of his public appearances. Even if this select sampling points toward Adler’s position on literacy being more technical, even maybe mechanical, rather than imaginative or psychical, it doesn’t diminish the overarching wisdom of his contribution to a meaningful view of reading.
From that contribution, two points stand out: First, the reading life is not the good life, but the good life is a life with reading in it. Second, reading is a matter of practice and habit: “Knowing how to read well [is] like any other art or skill. There [are] rules to learn and to follow. Through practice good habits must be formed. There [are] no insurmountable difficulties about it. Only willingness to learn and patience in the process [are] required.”
It is obvious that we stand in dire need of the reminder that reading, to paraphrase Walter Sobchak, isn’t Nam; there are rules. But it is also obvious, at least to me, that something more is needful. And that something more, to my mind, is to step down from the ladder’s mechanical rung to one of its precedents: the fantastic.
“There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,” opined Emily Dickinson in one of her more creative moments. In other words, books are a way out; they are—as Jordan Peterson and C. S. Lewis, among others, have said—“portals,” the opening “through which” meaning enters into view. (Adler, incidentally, also sees reading as a way out—a way out of ignorance. In How to Read a Book, he writes: “One way out…is to learn to read better, and then, by reading better, to learn more of what can be learned through reading.”)
But books, like portals, or doors, or windows, are also a way in to something, to somewhere. Once we see books primarily in this way, then it is so much more immediately obvious why we would want to possess, both for ourselves and for our children, a technical excellence in contending with reading. Reading doesn’t only sharpen your mind; it puts wind in your sails; it quickens your step as you go through the door; it lends dexterity to your hand as you polish the window through which you can see vistas and viewpoints previously unknown, unchallenged, unimaginable.
The only fault of a student, says Adler during the question-and-answer period of Firing Line interview, is “a lack of docility. The lack of the virtue of being teachable.” The majority of the fault for student failure, he continues, lies with the parents. Buckley, sardonically, rejoins: “Can we replace them?” And Adler replies: “Well, Plato did. Plato did. He removed them from the care of a child.”
Yes, and appointed the State to be the child’s guardian. Which is all well and good in a virtuous republic. But last time I checked, that ain’t ours. If the inculcation of indocility in one’s children is grounds for abdicating her natural right to educate the same, then the best course of action is put a premium on generating docility. Henri Bergson, French philosopher and all-around genius, claimed that art should “lead us to a state of perfect docility.” If Adler is right in saying that reading can be—is—an art, then what more readily accessible avenue toward docility can we find than reading? (If your toddler is already a successful painter, then read no further and unsubscribe.)
It turns out the threshold for the what of that reading is actually quite low. More than a century ago, Chesterton wrote: “When we are very young children, we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales.” And as for the how, Adler—because he is not the bad guy, as much as I might have made him seem so—underscores heavily the key ingredient: the best reading is “that kind of reading which its readers do not do well enough, or at all, except when they are in love.”
Forces stand at the ready to remedy our failure to educate our children. We need not give them the opportunity. We can read to our children with love. We can teach our children how to read and teach them well. Baby steps.
Credits: Vincent van Gogh, First Steps, after Millet (1890), via Wikimedia Commons