Why do you read (other than pleasure and entertainment?)

[WICKES]

When I was studying English literature I (like most people) was asked, often aggressively, "what's the point of that?". I'm British, so I guess that partly explains it: the English-speaking cultures are notoriously contemptuous of the arts. What is the point of studying Shakespeare and Dante and Proust etc? Why do you read the classics? There must be more to it than simple pleasure and entertainment. I adore the poetry of T S Eliot and Philip Larkin, but they don't make me happy or even entertain me. I get pleasure from the beauty of their language of course, but there is more to it than that. One time, I was quietly reading George Orwell's essay on King Lear in the staff canteen at work. This guy started on me, the sub-text being "it's all a load of crap...what's the point...why bother...the only thing to focus on is money and promotion and a bigger house...people who read Shakespeare are pretentious wankers who don't really enjoy it...poetry is a total waste of time...you're just showing off...you think reading poetry makes you better than me" and so on.

But why should someone make an effort to read through the canon? Why read Shakespeare and Blake and Dickens and Conrad? Why try and understand Eliot's Four Quartets? If your 14 year old nephew asked you why he should bother, what would you say? Let's take pleasure and entertainment as a given.

I would say

1. Reading great books expands your mind and fills it with beauty and truth. If you spend your time watching trashy reality shows, reading The Sun and resenting your neighbour for his new car then your mind will shrink and become like an ugly, dark, suffocating little room. When your mind is full to bursting with ideas, with poetry and story, it will become a place you can retreat into.

2. The beauty of language. The beauty of language will lift you up when human life seems ugly and squalid. Poetry in particular is a wonderful antidote to the ugly blandness of life on a suburban housing estate.

3. Consolation. There is comfort in finding that other people have thought and felt as you do. Great literature can make you feel less alone, especially once you have found particular works you love and want to return to again and again.

4. Wisdom and guidance through the stages of life.

5. Friendship. Eventually you will encounter people who share your love of good books. If you are lucky enough to find someone who can share ideas without their ego/ self-esteem issues getting in the way (i.e someone who doesn't need to show off, to put you down etc, but just enjoys "playing gracefully with ideas" as Oscar Wilde put it) then you will have hours of pleasure.

[Emil Miller]

As you point out, a lot of people read as a form of escapism and there is nothing wrong with that. If they also find that it broadens their experience then that is a plus but it will only be as an adjunct to the experience they will gain from life in general. From a personal standpoint I spent long periods working in fairly mundane positions which at the time might have been better spent reading good books, but because of the variety of jobs that I undertook over a long period, I know, looking back, that the multiplicity of people I met gave me as good an insight into human nature as that which I encountered reading about the fictional characters in the works of eminent authors. It is in retrospect that we are able to see the pattern of life and what we have been able to glean from it. There is also nothing wrong in focusing on money, not because it buys material things but it buys something more important, namely: time. With sufficient money we are able to utilise our time to broaden our horizons by travel and studying those things that interest us.These may well include literature or any number of other subjects but it is in the nature of things that few manage to achieve financial independence and will usually end up working rather than pursuing their predilections; in which case, literary escapism is a pretty good remedy.

[ladderandbucket]

Short answer: satisfaction.

It can be hard work but, like all things, the more you put in the more you get out. Watching some blockbuster movie gives instant pleasure but there is only so much you can get from it. The rewards of understanding Shakespeare are nearly limitless. I feel that literature is the closest I can get to actually living in someone else's mind, thinking their thoughts and seeing the world from their perspective. Sometimes I feel astonished at the way I can be reading some great thinker, sharing their ideas as if they were my own... then I put the book down and 30 seconds later I am back to my own tawdry, parochial thoughts.

I believe language is what separates humans from other animals. Words are the way we program our brains and organise our world. They can do things to us that sounds and images can't. To read is a great privilege and if we read judiciously it can have a positive, lasting effect on the way we think.

[osho]

There are many ends and aspects as to,why we do a piece of work rather than idling out in our suffocated airless room. Why to take troubles to leave home,early in the morning for a walk in a cold morning? Why to go on a climbing expedition? Why to do strenuous physical exercises? Why to work hard?

Not to do anything is to deaden our muscles and mind and to go against nature or to live unnaturally, artificially, meaninglessly, wastefully, fruitlessly, pathetically, inertly. Not to engage oneself in work is to live dryly, pitiably and parasitically. Living on others' labor or sweat is nonliving, dying, not flowing but freezing.

Reading something first and foremost is to entertain our minds with others' thoughts, experiences and feelings. Reading broaden our horizon and we can visualize the broader views, greater sights, higher range of nature and society. It gives you a sense of mindfulness and spaciousness. It helps you to break the cocoon of your prejudices, your narrow sentiments, and insulate yourself from dogmatic perceptions of the world you live in. It blazes your path towards enlightenment that leads to a world of great masters, saints, gurus past and present who will open a portal to a world of exotic things. Reading helps you to observe beauty otherwise unobservable. Reading guides you to find a shorter course to delectable mountains where you may come across deities, fairies, heavenly figures, otherwise invisible, in material manifestations. Reading has limitless joys, and unthinkable advantages, my friends. You can explore into the world of art, beauty, romance at so a little cost

[Eiseabhal]

Some folk think all malt whisky tastes the same. Some people are tone deaf. Some cannot see well. Some cannot enjoy literature. Some are philistines. Some boors. Do you really need a justification to read? Yon cove must have really got to you!

[stlukesguild]

Reading something first and foremost is to entertain our minds with others' thoughts, experiences and feelings. Reading broaden our horizon and we can visualize the broader views, greater sights, higher range of nature and society. It gives you a sense of mindfulness and spaciousness. It helps you to break the cocoon of your prejudices, your narrow sentiments, and insulate yourself from dogmatic perceptions of the world you live in. It blazes your path towards enlightenment that leads to a world of great masters, saints, gurus past and present who will open a portal to a world of exotic things. Reading helps you to observe beauty otherwise unobservable. Reading guides you to find a shorter course to delectable mountains where you may come across deities, fairies, heavenly figures, otherwise invisible, in material manifestations. Reading has limitless joys, and unthinkable advantages, my friends. You can explore into the world of art, beauty, romance at so a little cost.

:thumbsup:

[islandclimber]

I read... mostly to derange my mind and disturb my senses? :p

[WICKES]

Interesting responses, thanks.

For me, literature is a comforter and guide- like a very, very wise old man who speaks in an astonishingly beautiful way and has experienced everything. I also think of it as an antidote to the tedious, squalid ugliness of life in the UK in 2013. I live in the south east of England, a world of suburban housing estates and windswept 'out of town' shopping centres where individual's are judged almost entirely on their income, the car they drive, the size of their house etc. I guess that's probably true of most modern, post-industrial western democracies (though I do think the French and Italians have more respect for art and literature than most Brits). In spite of the astonishing treasure house of literature the English are sitting on, most people I know never read anything, and when they do it's the latest 'must read because everyone else is reading it' piece of crap like Dan Brown. I'm sorry to say that the Brits, especially the English, are pretty contemptuous of the arts. I hesitate to tell people I read poetry, for example, for fear of being thought 'a bit weird'. In fact, if I ever met someone at work who liked poetry we'd have to keep our voices low as we discussed it, like dissidents criticising a totalitarian government!!

[jayat]

I read all your comments about the main question as well as all the excellent points and resons why. Nevertheless, after thinking about it thoroughly, I came to the conclusion that I read because I need it. It maybe sounds weird or some kind of snobibish answer. On the contrary, believe me or not, I don't fell I read to be a better human being, but to do something I fell I need , something almost visceral. I see myself, in this case, like the one who needs to wear sport shoes and go for a long run at dawn, or the one who carefully collects seals using tweezers under the lighting lamp.
I don't fell I'm going to be anything else of who I am at the present moment after having read all the greatest authors on earth. Definitely, my mind will have 'widened' by that time but just magnified with cultural references, with rethorics and figures of speech, with a better knowledge of literary texts without, and that is my point, having changed who I am. I talk from experience: I think one evolutes through wordly circumstances (meeting people, having worked in several jobs, travelling, getting divorced, etc.). Literature is all about a self-world, but nothing to do with us in the real one. That is why, probably, people usally think who studied language and literature, linguistics, etc. is some kind of fool with no much future.

[stlukesguild]

I read... mostly to derange my mind and disturb my senses?

An academic attempt at becoming a visionary ala Rimbaud?

[Lykren]

I think this is a fascinating question. I personally have never understood the idea of reading for the sake of 'personal enrichment' - I don't even know what personal enrichment might be. I feel as if, if reading did not have an compulsively gratifiable pleasure in it, I would have no reason to read.

The one reason I can think might be of value is the memories reading provides me with, something I've discovered recently. However, I think that the pleasure of reviewing a book in my mind is really an extension of the reading process itself, not least because it only fills me with the desire to revisit a particular work.

Perhaps I also read for the sake of avoiding pain. But again, this seems to me to be a far cry from the idea of reading as an activity which makes us better people in some abstract sense. Ultimately, I read because I have an urge to, the same way I have urges to urinate.

Or are 'personal enrichment' and 'pleasure' merely phrases and words with the same definition, masquerading as separate opinions?

[stlukesguild]

I live in the south east of England, a world of suburban housing estates and windswept 'out of town' shopping centres where individual's are judged almost entirely on their income, the car they drive, the size of their house etc. I guess that's probably true of most modern, post-industrial western democracies (though I do think the French and Italians have more respect for art and literature than most Brits). In spite of the astonishing treasure house of literature the English are sitting on, most people I know never read anything, and when they do it's the latest 'must read because everyone else is reading it' piece of crap like Dan Brown. I'm sorry to say that the Brits, especially the English, are pretty contemptuous of the arts. I hesitate to tell people I read poetry, for example, for fear of being thought 'a bit weird'. In fact, if I ever met someone at work who liked poetry we'd have to keep our voices low as we discussed it, like dissidents criticising a totalitarian government!!

I could be worse. You could be an American... where admiration for the arts... especially among young males... is almost certainly perceived as a sign that you are gay. It could be even worse than that. You could be an artist. I've always been struck by the macho nature of American painting... especially from the so-called "heroic" era of American Abstract Expressionists: big abstract paintings painted in old abandoned factory warehouses by guys that look like factory workers or house painters.

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_tumblr_mhdhgstkJQ1qcsoawo1_1280_zpsa8fcf2d5.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=tumblr_mhdhgstkJQ1qcsoawo1_1280_zpsa8fcf2d 5.jpg)

And sculptors that were closer to welders than they were to Michelangelo... let alone Canova:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_david_smith_zps40484adf.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=david_smith_zps40484adf.jpg)

Even Pop Artists like James Rosenquist maintained the persona of a working class tough... in this case a billboard sign painter (which Rosenquist was in his youth)... as opposed to one of those effete European painters laboring away in a atelier somewhere in Paris:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_011-james-rosenquist-theredlist1_zpsfb3dda62.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=011-james-rosenquist-theredlist1_zpsfb3dda62.jpg)

I, unfortunately, was cursed with a greater admiration for European "old masters" than American Abstract Expressionists or Pop Artists. My subject matter of choice in art school (then as now) was the female nude. About half-way through my first year of art school, one of the older women students declared... "You can stop painting all the nudes now David; we all know you're straight.":wink5:

[MorpheusSandman]

There are many ends and aspects as to,why we do a piece of work rather than idling out in our suffocated airless room. Why to take troubles to leave home,early in the morning for a walk in a cold morning? Why to go on a climbing expedition? Why to do strenuous physical exercises? Why to work hard?

Not to do anything is to deaden our muscles and mind and to go against nature or to live unnaturally, artificially, meaninglessly, wastefully, fruitlessly, pathetically, inertly. Not to engage oneself in work is to live dryly, pitiably and parasitically. Living on others' labor or sweat is nonliving, dying, not flowing but freezing.

Reading something first and foremost is to entertain our minds with others' thoughts, experiences and feelings. Reading broaden our horizon and we can visualize the broader views, greater sights, higher range of nature and society. It gives you a sense of mindfulness and spaciousness. It helps you to break the cocoon of your prejudices, your narrow sentiments, and insulate yourself from dogmatic perceptions of the world you live in. It blazes your path towards enlightenment that leads to a world of great masters, saints, gurus past and present who will open a portal to a world of exotic things. Reading helps you to observe beauty otherwise unobservable. Reading guides you to find a shorter course to delectable mountains where you may come across deities, fairies, heavenly figures, otherwise invisible, in material manifestations. Reading has limitless joys, and unthinkable advantages, my friends. You can explore into the world of art, beauty, romance at so a little costWhat he said.


You could be an American... where admiration for the arts... especially among young males... is almost certainly perceived as a sign that you are gay. Hmmm, I've never noticed this myself. I'm a young man with an admiration for the arts and nobody I know ever assumed I was gay...

[islandclimber]

An academic attempt at becoming a visionary ala Rimbaud?

Or a desperate ploy to become a visionary like H. Bosch? I think I'm often lost in a Borgesian labyrinth, stuck on a train with no destination point, double refracted through Iceland Spar into something unrecognizable... Sometimes, with literature, you just need to find solid ground, before you break the crust again?

[tonywalt]

The primary reason I read is curiosity. I suppose that is why I read so much non fiction. But I can learn much from a Somerset Maugham novel or short story.

[MorpheusSandman]

I also wanted to say this:
One time, I was quietly reading George Orwell's essay on King Lear in the staff canteen at work. This guy started on me, the sub-text being "it's all a load of crap...what's the point...why bother...the only thing to focus on is money and promotion and a bigger house...people who read Shakespeare are pretentious wankers who don't really enjoy it...poetry is a total waste of time...you're just showing off...you think reading poetry makes you better than me" and so on. This guy is an a-hole, pure and simple. I read a lot so I've certainly had people ask me what I'm reading, but I've never had someone negatively criticize me for it. At worst, they sometimes look confused, but I can't imagine someone being so negatively critical of what someone else enjoys reading, much less passing a judgment like "reading poetry is just showing off," which is far more pretentious (thinking you know what someone's intentions are) than actually reading it.