So Was Recitation

Both the kids are away this weekend.  That is quite rare.  They’re over with their brother in Tokyo.  What a good brother, he flew them both over.  So, there is no one to nag.  No one to wake up.  No one to suggest they ride a bicycle or drum, or sing, or dance, or read, or put down the damn computer.  Some part of the morning is robotic.  Check emails, read the paper, make some coffee.  There are many, many things that one could do.  But for now, I’ve decided to go back up to bed, lie down next to the Mrs, and . . . read.  Just read.  Read the wonderful novel I’m in the middle of: “The Sword of Honor” by Evelyn Waugh.

He writes so sparingly.  The dialogue is taught as twine and when it isn’t uproariously funny it is suddenly sad and somber.  One is struck by how much filler Americans stuff into their adopted language.  The diction among Evelyn Waugh’s caste of Englishman in 1940 is innately pithy and precise.  The Halberdiers have been preparing to go to war for quite some time.  I suspect this is all purposeful and I’ll feel the wrench all that more convincingly when some of these familiar chaps are blown to bits.

I suppose most people these day watch the television and consume art as video.  It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do.  I have no interest.  Or at least, on the balance, I’d rather enjoy art by reading it than watching it.  Surely, I’m a museum piece.  I note that it is harder to share art in this fashion.  You can recommend others read something or read something someone else has insisted you dig into, but it’s not as though you’re going to head out and read a novel together with someone else, and then debrief as you and this person finish up at just the right time. 

Reading is a reasonable way to learn.  But so was recitation.  No one does that much any more.  Memorizing lines of the Bible, lines of Li Bai, these were all time-honored ways to acquire and transfer information.  They are increasingly anachronistic.  Reading is a more central, well established shibboleth.  Will it become quaint to read anything before long?  If one could secure knowledge faster through another consumption method, say cerebral uploading, then reading would be simply become a quaint old fashioned past time like strumming a lyre or reciting couplets.  In the meantime, it was nice to read a hundred pages of a master of the English language while lying in bed, ignoring the rest of the world.

Saturday, 09/23/17