This
Journal

October
1999

A wave of possible responses rushes over me as I watch this young man, a freshman, read his book with his finger. He is not blind; this is not braille. It is a standard paperback copy of To Kill A Mockingbird... probably somewhere in the range of the 30 millionth copy. I wonder that the ink does not dissolve in a greasy smear under that finger as it rushes like a man on a mission across each line and down the page. It moves with such ferocity that the two readers behind him gaze in wonder, and this swooshing finger so disrupts the girl beside him that after some fruitless casting of evil eyes she quietly asks him to stop. He does not stop. But the finger lightens up, relaxes on the page without slowing down. And then he is done. Chapter 3 has been conquered.

The rest of us plod on...word by word, phrase by phrase, page by leaden page...intermittently distracted by a thump in the hall, a few notes from the background guitar, the rustling of bodies too close all around us. We pause to study the hands of that clock which have been only half-right since August. We permit Scout's old battle with Miss Caroline to filter through our many awarenesses of classrooms, teachers, books, and students. We scatch our chins and rub our noses and shift in these uncomfortable seats.

I want to ask that boy about the reading. I want to quiz him to see what he knows of what his eyes have surveyed. It is possible, I suppose, that he was actually reading. But I want to disprove it. I suspect he was showing off. He had possibly taken a speed reading class, as I once had, or he had seen or imagined how one might speed-read. He loved the elegance and efficiency of the moving finger, a sign to the world that he was no ordinary fellow but a person of consequence who could master these tedious tasks...with a single digit. It might have been his make believe: Let's pretend that I can read this quickly - wouldn't that be wonderful?

I want to tell him that once I was ashamed of myself for being such a slow reader. That, at least, is how I felt about myself back in high school and college. (My motives were noble. I wanted speed to read faster, read more. I suspect these kids want speed to get it over with.) I eventually figured that my brain could only work well at a certain natural pace, and that was my pace. I could only notice important stuff when I gave myself the time to see it. (But what is important in reading? What have we taught our students to believe is important?)

I want to tell him that this is not the best way to read a novel, that reading is like cooking mom's winter soup. Things have to bubble around for awhile, a long while. As Huck Finn says: "In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better." Simmer time. Soul time. Speed kills.

"So how is Scout feeling by the end of that chapter?"

I want to ask him, but I don't. And then the bell rings and he's gone.

The time of reading, the time defined by the author's language resonating in the self, is not the world's time, but the soul's.
Sven Birkert