A Good Read

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body,” Joseph Addison said. So do our minds get flabby from reading lowbrow materials? Patrick Guntensperger begs to differ.

For a millennium after the fall of the Roman Empire, literacy in Europe was restricted to a tiny class of intellectuals and specialists within the clergy. Townsfolk, peasants and serfs, the bulk of the population, couldn’t read, nor could the aristocracy or even most monarchs; a king who could read was a rarity.

That all changed in 1450 when Johannes Gutenberg (one of my ancestors) built his first printing press.

Within 150 years, literacy was within the grasp of virtually anyone who wanted it. Reading and writing were skills practiced among the European population from the merchant class to wandering troubadours. The written word had entered the mainstream of society; Shakespeare was at the peak of his career, writing sonnets and plays for the common people. It was arguably the practice and habit of reading that was the single most significant driver of the artistic and intellectual explosion of the Renaissance.

In the 21^st century a country that doesn’t encourage the habit of reading among its people is just asking to be left behind in the global steeplechase. Recognizing this, the Indonesian Constitution requires that 20 percent of the state budget be dedicated to education. In the time-honoured Indonesian tradition of disregarding laws that are inconvenient, that constitutional requirement has never been met. One of the results of this neglect of education – which has the tendency to instil the habit of reading in children – is that Indonesians simply don’t read much.

According to Statistics Indonesia, in 1993 only 23.31 percent of Indonesians over the age of 10 habitually read newspapers or magazines of any kind. Things have not improved much. In 2006, those figures had climbed to 23.46 percent. Reading of anything more substantial, like books or any literature at all, was and continues to be statistically insignificant, probably due to price and lack of availability in many areas.

And yet in the media and in lifestyle pages, we see a negative reaction to the growing popularity of what is dismissed as teen-lit, or – shudder – chick-lit. Pundits and social commentators wag their heads in dismay over the lack of depth and quality these books represent. What about more cerebral literature? What about the great classics? Why must kids rot their brains with rubbish when there are works of art to be perused?

There seems to be a prevailing view among those of us who are in a position to comment in print that such literature doesn’t meet reasonable standards of quality. Readers of these less-than Shakespearian tomes are put down for their lowbrow preferences and their critics pat themselves on the back for their Frasier-like discriminating tastes.

The other side of the argument is, of course…oh, shut up!

In a world in which literacy is one of our most precious assets, in which the very idea of reading for pleasure is a tiny ember that needs to be fanned into a flame, the last thing we need is for those who are just beginning to develop a love of reading to be made to feel boorish.

Certainly much popular literature is devoid of merit. As has been pointed out before, the Patrick Principle states that 90 percent of everything is crap. That doesn’t mean, however, that the exercise of finding pearls among the rubbish ought to be abandoned. That certainly doesn’t mean that a young person reading her first novel should slam it shut, and give up reading because that book doesn’t meet even minimal standards of quality. On the contrary, if she finds even the crap engaging, her persistence ought to be encouraged and nurtured.

If we haven’t read at least some of that 90 percent, how will we be able to judge the truly sublime? What we ought to be doing when we see one of our children reading something that has no true aesthetic value is cheer her on. Talk about what she finds appealing in the book. Then dump a load of other books on the floor around her. Odds are that one out of 10 will have real worth. Maybe she’ll read it. Encourage her. If she does, she’ll see the difference; she’ll recognize the merit of literature over hack work.

If a young person has started to read some third-rate pirate adventures, hard on the heels of the trend started by the Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean films, don’t discourage him. Buy him a bunch more, but just include Robert Louis Stevensons’s Treasure Island in the mix. When the truly fine is stacked up against the tawdry, he’ll see the difference because he has something to compare it to.

There is nothing wrong with reading vulgar and poorly written fiction. It provides a baseline from which we can learn to judge quality work. It makes the truly worthy stand out in sharp contrast, once we have the critical reading skills that can only be developed with omnivorous consumption of the written word.

Since it is a habit of reading for pleasure that we want to encourage, it’s important that we do exactly that: allow new readers to find pleasure in reading. That comes from reading what they enjoy. With time they will seek out more refined products, better quality material, books that meet some critical standards. All discerning tastes need time and experience to develop.

And if it makes us feel better about our children reading lowbrow, popular teen-lit, let’s not forget that Shakespeare’s plays were once dismissed as vulgar popular entertainment. It’s not likely that there are any challengers to the Bard of Avon among the current crop, but we’d sure feel stupid if history were to judge otherwise, wouldn’t we?

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