Instant Gratification

Very few readers today could sit still long enough to get through the first page of a Dickens novel. Oh, they might make it through a film of one of his novels, but read it? Not likely. And that is fine on some accounts. Different readers prefer different books. Yet, in the 19th Century, Dickens novels were in great demand. They were loved by the masses. They were serialized in newspapers, and talked about on the streets and in drawing rooms alike. Charles Dickens was a rock star of his day. He was what editors would call commercial. And what most would call literary today.

You might say, “ Well, Dickens is old-fashioned. It takes forever to read through and remember all his different characters and how they connect to one another. We don’t care about Victorian England’s problems. It’s cruel to expect kids to want to read that difficult, uninteresting stuff. No wonder kids don’t read if a teacher should dare want them to read writers like him.

And, yet, most of the children and adults of Dickens day did not have the abundant educational opportunities that we in our culture have today. Still, Dickens’ books were read and anticipated. We might think the problem is the difference in interests. But the human situation now is largely the same human situation then. We love. We hate. We are sometimes virtuous, sometimes not. We have greed, over-weening pride, distrust, treachery, dishonesty, valor, integrity, and so on.

But, we do express ourselves differently than the Victorians did or the regency era folks did, and, goodness, we wouldn’t want to bother ourselves with trying to understand a different time, their ways, and their expressions nor their particular follies or heroics. So, I have come to believe that our falling literacy rates and reading levels in this day of abundant educational opportunities can, at least in part, be laid at the feet of impatience. I suppose we might say that technology has had a big part in stoking impatience—and, no doubt, it has, but I think also has our tendency in education and almost all parts of life to disregard what was. Progress can be a wonderful thing, but it has put us on the path where we expect instant gratification.

Taking One’s Time

Today books “need” to be shorter. Only the most ensconced writer with a huge following can get a tome published. We like the fast-paced. We have to have something to hook us by the first few paragraphs of a book if we are to read further. And heaven help the writer whose first page is not “commercial.” Writing is a business, and patience is in short supply. Even those we call “readers” as if it is their profession, seldom have patience much further than the first page or two.

For fair or foul, I have always been a patient reader. Perhaps, I am too patient as I have only given up on one book in my life. Of course, there are genres I don’t care for and don’t read on my own volition, but I like to take my time reading. I like to rethink the action, ponder the meanings, ferret out the author’s themes. You might call me a slow reader because I am. I read every word.

I attribute this patient reading to an unlikely happenstance. It is simply this: my small, rural, high school library had been neglected for many years. There was no librarian. Now when I say neglected, I do not mean that the room was in disarray. It was not. A teacher or two kept it neat and nice. And I loved going there. I mean only that little or no money had been spent on new books in thirty or more years. But, oh, the books we had. We had almost all of the most celebrated 19th century American, English, Russian, and French novels. I read War and Peace and Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), Madame Bovary (Flaubert), novels by Dickens, Elliot, Scott, the Bronte’s, Twain, Chopin, and many more. I also read early 20th Century books like Gone With the Wind (Mitchell), Rebecca (du Maurier), Great Gatzby (Fitzgerald), etc. Some of these books were deep in theme and thought. Others had a vast cast of characters that had to be looked after. And most had both. Right away I had to develop some patience and often a bit of tenacity. It was so worth it. I lived so many lives, took trips to many parts of the world, and traveled back and forth in time. I am so proud when I see children who read contemporary fantasies, realistic fiction, and nonfiction, but I would love to see them develop the patience to read the great writers of the past as well. It is their heritage. Who was it that said, “They will love what we have loved, but we must show them how”? May we show them how.

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