The problem with deep reading today is that we must do it in a distraction war zone: more books piling up next to our beds, yet another New Yorker to add to the stack, an inbox filled with Substacks we forgot we were subscribed to. And that’s just the material we want to read.
Nevermind the notifications from the apps on your phone, the mating call of Reddit, the siren song of YouTube, the zillionth tab you left open on your browser when you glance at your monitor. The technological arms race to capture our attention has reached the levels of high frequency algorithmic trading.
I’m old enough to remember the days when the ambient drone of a television or radio was all we had to fill the void of dreaded silence. We were so bored at breakfast we would read the back of a cereal box if that morning’s newspaper hadn’t yet been thrown out of a car window onto our driveway. We flipped through the World Book Encyclopedia out of sheer desperation and read random entries just to find something goddamn interesting.
Now that everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket connected to the world’s accumulated knowledge AND billions of other people’s minds, that species of boredom is all but extinct.
I’m reminded of this Twilight Zone episode starring Burgess Meredith as Mr. Henry Bemis, a “bookworm” who wants nothing more than to read his books in peace, but, as Rod Serling tells in his patented opening narration delivery, “is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock.” His happy place is the vault of the bank where he works, where he can take his lunch and read undisturbed. When a nuclear war hits, he is saved by his nerdiness, ensconced in his vault, and he emerges to find his city, and the world around him, in ruins.
He stumbles around the rubble, looking for signs of life, and, finding nothing, prepares to put himself out of his misery with a revolver, when he spots…a public library! Seeing all of the books intact, and with none of his former distractions in the way, he rolls around like a pig in shit, and in the process, accidentally crushes his reading glasses. Oh, the dramatic irony.
Corny ending aside, I am Henry Bemis. I often find myself wishing for Big Tech to have its Big Tobacco moment so that I can finally settle in and read all of the books I’ve been meaning to read. Lucky for me, I have dozens of extra pairs of reading glasses.
