Running with Dangerous Ideas

Our usual Monday night routine is to come home after my tap class and relax.  Dearest likes to watch Q and A -- a Question and Answer panel show that I can only assume must have had actual questions and actual answers at one time but now is really nothing more than a televised talk-radio show, where the audience, whether in the studio or via emailed videos or tweets, asks questions of the panelists based on the top media stories of the week (note I did not say top news stories, for in my experience the top news stories are rarely the ones promoted by the media and are usually not controversial enough to make for a good give-and-take-but-mostly-give-lively-proclamation-of-opinions-but-definitely-nothing-approaching-an-actual-conversation).  I can take or leave Q and A, but dearest enjoys it so we watch it.   Well, to be more precise, dearest watches and I do my best to ignore it.

A couple of Mondays ago, I caught the tail-end of the show.  I had purposely avoided most of it because one of the panelists was Germaine Greer and I cannot stand her.  But as I said, I heard the last bit of this episode, which featured a panel of authors invited to speak at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

The question that I heard asked was about the phenomenal success of the book 50 Shades of Grey, and its sequels (which I freely admit I have not read, and have no intention of reading).

TONY JONES: Well, let's stick with 50 Shades of Grey. First the original question and I’d would like to hear Sefi. Why do you - to what do you attribute the astonishing success of this series of novels? 

[. . .] 

SEFI ATTA: At the same time hopefully as well. You know, it was clever marketing and good for her. I haven't read the book. You know, I don't know where it would lead. I don't think there is such a thing as gateway reading that would lead from casual reading to more serious reading. 

Q and A Monday, 27 August 2012, “Mutilation and the Media Generation”
Panelists:  Germaine Greer, Anthony Appiah, Sefi Atta and Simon Callow

At this point my mind wandered from the success of New York Times Bestselling pulp novels to the idea of “gateway reading.”  In my head I flushed this out imagining serial readers at a Twelve-Step Program Meeting admitting that they started with the P.D. Eastman and Dr. Seuss books and then moved on to heavier stuff like E.L. Konigsburg and Judy Blume, and before they knew it they were addicted.  They came home one night to find friends holding their dog-eared copy of War and Peace saying “This is an intervention, we have to stop your reading.”  I had visions of book-junkies gambling their rent money on copies of Hemingway or Joyce in back alleys or “dime-chapters” of Dickens or Conan Doyle.  I saw children hiding their stash of Dumas or Garcia Marquez under their mattresses so their parents can’t find them; gangs of addicts getting their fix by spending lost weekends in libraries.

Yes, my imagination ran away with the idea of “gateway reading.”  But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if this was not something we should encourage.  When I was working, a co-worker once proudly proclaimed that she had not read a book in over twenty years.  I could barely contain my shock and disgust at that statement.  How can anyone not have read a book for twenty years?  And how can that person be proud to admit it?  I feel like a failure when it takes me more than twenty days to slog through a book!  I certainly could never go twenty years without reading a single book.

I grew up in a family that valued reading.  My parents were voracious readers and tried to share their love of reading with their children.  They definitely succeed with me.  I am fairly sure they succeeded with my brothers as well.  When we would go out to dinner as a family, one of us would always stop at the front door and ask the others “books or no books?”  A waitress at a local restaurant got to know us as “the book family” and stopped by, even if we were not seated in her section to check out what we were reading.  It was very rarely that we were seen anywhere without a book, and even now as I prepare to walk down to the grocery, I have to stop myself from dropping a book in my backpack.  Books are not accessories or diversions to me, they are as necessary as food, water, clothing and shelter.  I am not complete without a book within easy reach.

The reactions of the general public showed that this view of reading as essential to life was not shared by most people.  This worries me.  What are people doing if they are not reading?  How does anyone get through a day without reading?  Where have we failed as a society?

The more I thought about the idea of “gateway reading” and book addicts, the more I decided that I am one.  The idea appeals to me because I can see myself in it -- maybe not freebasing Fitzgerald, but still, I am a book addict.  As I thought more and more about it, I decided that my gateway book had to be one of the collection of Beatrix Potter books I treasured as a child (and were packed in the boxes to move with me).  I could not get enough of The Tale of Two Bad Mice or The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit, and was known to sit on my closet floor in the gathering twilight and read both of them over and over.  My love of reading only grew from there, through my mother’s hand-me-down Cherry Ames books, to my own teen-age-trash Sweet Valley High books, to now when I cannot walk past a bookstore without stopping to see if there is something new and interesting, or old and familiar on offer.

We, as a society, need to encourage people to read more.  Dearest often quotes his mother saying “it doesn’t matter what people read, only that they read.”  We need to make sure we instill that thought not only in or children, but in adults too.  Why can’t more people bring books to dinners out?  Why not have designated reading areas in restaurants, planes, waiting rooms, bars?  Why not have public spaces designed with the reader in mind -- well-lit and furnished with benches or cozy booths to encourage quick chapters in the park at lunch or romantic encounters over a shared volume of Browning?  Why can’t we encourage “gateway reading?”

My imagination took the idea of “gateway reading” to fanciful places, but why must it be so?  Why don’t we live in a society that values reading more than posting status updates?  Why aren’t celebrities ever photographed reading books?  Why is reading thought to be shameful?  Wouldn’t it be a better place if Jane Eyre or Arthur Dent were on the covers of magazines rather than Snooki or the Kardashians?