Turning reading into an art form – and those are fighting words
Like learning the moves of how to fight, reading is more than just a simple skill you learn in childhood, says philosopher and author Damon Young.
By CAROLINE TUNG
mojo deputy editor (culture)
You rarely hear about reading as a pursuit worth aspiring to. But philosopher Damon Young's latest book The Art of Reading makes it the focus.
“Part of the case of my book is spelling out the various rewards [of reading],” Young says.
Young was inspired to write the book when he noticed that while writing is a skill that is admired and recognised by society in many ways, the art and delicacies of reading well are largely ignored.
Young, who is an honorary Fellow in Philosophy at Melbourne Uni and one of the founding faculty at Melbourne's School of Life, hopes his work will teach others how to become better readers.
“The basic idea here is you could be really good at reading as a skill, but not use that skill well,” Young says.
He compares the skills required to read well with the skills required to be a good fighter.
“I know certainly in my case, there have been times when despite the fact that I read very well, I failed. I’ve been hasty, or I’ve been cowardly, or I’ve been unjust.”
But writing the book wasn’t just about helping himself.
“I got the sense that other people out there who want to read better, or more richly, or more subtlely, or more patiently, but are not sure how to do that,” he says.
Each chapter in The Art of Reading is devoted to what Young calls a type of “disposition” such as curiosity, patience, courage, pride, temperance and justice.
“What interested me was the idea that there are certain dispositions that help us think about reading,” Young explains.
“These sort of broad virtues help to organise our approach to the book, or to the newspaper or to the tweet.”
The philosophical approach to reading proposed by Young is about applying the literary virtues suggested to our own readings.
If you’re impatient, you’ll either miss out on the details or give up. If you’re indulgent or intemperate, you’ll only see the book at face value and miss the challenges. If you’re not curious, you’ll miss out on the book’s most distinctive and complex qualities.
Young says his approach is partially shaped by concepts like freedom, and what each reader "freely brings" to the text.
“The basic idea is when we’re reading, we are being offered all kinds of experiences of other times, of other places, of other people’s psyches of intense emotions and clarifying ideas and rich perceptions, he says.
“But we have to bring those to the text.
“Without us, the book is just a lump of paper and ink. We have to transform those sensations into something that makes sense.”
Celebrating the role of books is important to Young, whose inspiration for the book was born out a an “autobiographical urge”.
“When I looked over my own life, I realised at every stage from being a toddler to being a school child, to being a teenager to being a 20-something, 30-something, and now being 40, what a huge part of my experience books have been,” says Young.
“Every stage, there’s some book that I remember influencing me or catching my attention.”
Indeed, Young is horrified and surprised that, anecdotally, there are university students who rarely pick up a book.
“Reading offers particular experiences," he says, and if you don’t read, you don’t know what you’re missing, you don’t what kind of experiences you’ve avoided, how vibrant they are, or how subtle they are, or how illuminating they are.
“There are all kinds of other reasons for reading, so it might be good for empathy, it might be good for developing your theory of mind, or it might be good for warding off dementia, or it might be certainly good for your grades.
“But ultimately, most people who love reading love the experience of reading.”
For Young, the Digital Age is not all doom and gloom, and he is optimistic the internet offers countless opportunities for readers to engage further with ideas.
“One of the wonderful things about the Internet in general is, and people often don’t, but you can diversify the number of different opinions you come in contact with,” he says.
“And for reading, that is fantastic, because it’s really impossible to develop these virtues alone. You have to come into contact with rival views of life.”
Young believes there are stages in life when some books are more appealing than others.
“It strikes me there’s no reason why young people can’t be just as patient, brave or curious as older people,” he says.
“The only thing that changes is how much experience they’ve had, and certainly, there are some books that you just might not be ready for, and there are other books that you might be too late for. ”
Young has written a number of books, including Distraction, Philosophy in the Garden and How to Think About Exercise.
The Art of Reading is available in hard copy and e-book at https://www.mup.com.au/items/164630
