Finding "A Certain Type of Silence"

David L. Ulin, book editor for the Los Angeles Times, recently wrote about how he's having a hard time sitting down to read. In "The Lost Art of Reading," he describes the problem as not "a failure of desire so much as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but focus: the ability to still my mind long enough to inhabit someone else's world, and to let that someone else inhabit mine. Reading is an act of contemplation, [. . .] In order for this to work, however, we need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise."

He blames his lack of focus on the usual culprit: "our over-networked culture, in which every rumor and mundanity is blogged and tweeted." He writes that people today don't seek "contemplation [. . .] but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. [. . .] it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time."

Though my gut reaction toward Ulin is one of sympathy (not only do I appreciate him as a fellow reader, but he's also written a beautifully worded article), I'm suspicious of his argument; it feels cheap and rote to blame a distracted mind on the Internet and social media. Having grown up with the Internet (I played computer games in elementary school computer labs and had AOL and Instant Messenger at home in high school), it's hard for me to say what the world would be like without these distractions, and it's hard to know whether I would be a better, more patient reader without them.

I have, however, felt what Ulin feels when I try to read, that "encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there is something out there that merits my attention." For Ulin, this sense comes from the immediateness and omnipresence of online culture, in which "time collapses into an ever-present now."

But for me, I think it's something else. Reading is certainly getting more difficult over time, and I, too, frequently feel like I should be doing something else when I sit down to read. But my distraction stems not from the Internet but from being in my mid-twenties, my increasing responsibilities, and my new worries over getting a job and being able to run my own life. Without school or a job to ground me, it's difficult to feel like I'm accomplishing anything with my time, even if I spend my days furiously researching career paths and refining my resume. My lack of paid employment makes it harder for me to enjoy reading because there's no solid productivity to make my free time more enjoyable, more emphatically my own; it's like not being able to enjoy your ice cream because you didn't get enough vegetable stew at dinner.

For me, the flash and distraction of Twitter and Facebook are certainly there, but the real distraction comes from inside, from the part of me that wants to accomplish something with my days, not just let a world of experiences wash over me.

Besides, Ulin forgets that codex books are just another form of technology, another mode of communication that was once regarded with suspicion. Our ancient ancestors shared their history through chanted poems. The Greeks used wax tablets. Writers of the Renaissance relied on hand-written sheaves of paper that they passed from friend to friend. The Victorians loved voluminous serialized books that went on for thousands of pages.

Twenty years ago, a 250-page paperback novel was the norm. Today's Internet is just another technological revolution, not the end of reading or literature. Perhaps the next hundred years will bring even newer technology against which the Internet will seem staid, traditional, solid, and comfortingly slow-paced.

I still agree with Ulin that reading has the power to help us to both "escape and to be engaged," that it is an essential "act of meditation, with all of meditation's attendant difficulty and grace." Reading a book is something that I would never give up. But I am weary of hearing people bellyache about Twitter and TMZ.com and the rapid proliferation of online media. We must learn how to take the best of what the Internet can offer while discovering a new equilibrium between online culture and our mental peace. This balance, I know, can be found; humans have been adapting to our new tools for millennia.