Whereas our reading for last Thursday focused on the author's life's history, as it revolves around the physical allure of books, experienced in their solidity as things, today's reading moves us in a more systematic way into the "inner space" of reading. We touched on this last week as well; now we're getting into it in a serious way.
The experience of reading is a subjective one as it unfolds in these chapters, but I think he's trying to do more than just record his own experience--he's trying to universalize it, put into words what experience with words actually is. To him, reading is a form of communion, and in the process the inner self, as opposed to the outer, social shell, is deepened and nourished. The self is constructed through the assimilation of the multiple perspectives it encounters in fiction. It is significant, I think, that the self, as well as the world in which that self is at home, is a private one.
What is paradoxical is the extraordinary publicness of Birkert's self-revelation to his readers. We touched on this a bit last time as well--how Birkert's records in painstaking detail the ritual he would go through at the end of each day when he unpacked his newly acquired books. In the reading for today, he is equally detailed in his effort at bringing the inwardness of his reading experience to life for his readers. I almost feel a bit embarrassed to be peeking into it.
In the webpage I linked you to above, there is a brief discussion of a set of essays Birkerts edited on the same subject, called Tolstoy's Dictaphone. I am interested in two labels that the author uses: the "romantic resistors" and the "progressives." Birkerts's work is indeed romantically nostalgic (his "Woman in the Garden" is unmistakably both), but what I find myself wondering is whether the technological age in which we find ourselves now must inevitably lead to the starving of our individual and collective souls.
So, what I want you to do for me is this: think of what your concept of "soul" is, and how you believe it is nourished. Does this term have any meaning for you whatsoever? Is there a kind of experience that makes sense of the term for you? What is the place of reading in this experience? What about music, television, film, interactions with other people, and the internet? What about communion with nature? How are these various experiences related to the idea of inner space, of soul, and how are they related to one another?
Another term you might think about is "reverie," a state of consciousness that for Birkerts is the key to the reading experience. Is this a pleasurable state for you? What role does reading play in achieving it? See you tomorrow.