Creative Rebellion Essays: Focus and Reading
The author’s grandmother introducing him to the joys of reading.
Our focus is fragmented. Our naked attention is destroyed by bite-sized piranhas of dopamine-producing social media and cortisol inducing news alerts. When we relax, we rarely just sit and do nothing (or meditate). We are looking for another distraction. Usually, that means a TV show or movie. But we can get our story fix through another medium, one in which our focus is sharpened: reading books.
Reading books is an active experience. The reader has to translate squiggles of abstract symbols (aka the alphabet) into meaning, which then the brain has to turn into visceral images from which we then derive emotional reactions. It requires more effort than watching actors on a stage-set in which everything is provided for you. Sure certain shows require more involvement, like keeping track of all of the characters in Game of Thrones (as well as understanding the specialized language spoken in British English) but, in general, moving pictures allows the viewer to be passive. Reading requires that you interpret the characters and produce your own internal theater.
In my experience, the active engagement that books require will increase your ability to focus, boost your memory, improve your analytical abilities, and expand your vocabulary.
I know times have changed and in another age, people used the massive tomes of Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake as entertainment, in lieu of radio or film, reading a chapter or two at night. But what I’ve found is that the slowed-down pace and requisite attention that books require allows for the mind to contemplate and extrapolate further outwards, allowing for new ideas to be birthed from the conflation of seemingly unrelated concepts.
Many of my associates focus on non-fiction books, usually ranging from self-help to business advice titles. Fiction is often considered to be less important. And if people do read fiction, it tends to be along the lines of James Patterson or Stephen King – something accessible with a whodunnit story arc or a I-hope-the-protagonist-can-escape-the-monster scenario. Which is fine. In the end, any long-form reading is good reading. However, what is, unfortunately, missing from more contemporary fiction is the public appetite to read something that might require more commitment, even books that are just a couple of decades-old like David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest or Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay or Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Hainish Novels.
During this stay-at-home pandemic, while we have some time on our hands, consider checking out some of the titles on Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels. Or greatest books by decade.
There is this overused, but nonetheless, true platitude:
“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”
– Harry S. Truman
This truism is born out by this article from Inc Magazine which reports that Warren Buffet reads 500 pages a day, Mark Cuban reads 3 hours a day and Bill Gates reads 50 books a year.
One of my creative idols, David Bowie, actually took a portable library (a secret, converted sound equipment trunk) filled with books on tour with him. You can find Bowie’s top 100 reads here.
Reading can be viewed as an isolated and isolating experience due to the focus it requires. However, you can make it into a family or community experience. If you are at home with your significant other, spouse, and perhaps children, allocate an hour an evening just to sit and read together in the same space.
Through the magic of Zoom you can start a book club and read a chapter a week to discuss with your friends, perhaps accompanied by coffee or wine or your drink of choice. A book club takes you a step deeper as you need to analyze what you read and express it to your friends. There’s the positive peer pressure to actually read the book to have something to say and, in this manner, through discussion other ideas that could be quite relevant to you and your life will arise. And you’ll probably finish the damn book you started.
For me, books have always been great teachers and friends. In my youth books were an alleviation from loneliness as well as a source of true inspiration. I’ve learned about empathy through reading about travails seen through the eyes of characters who are not my gender, my sexual orientation, skin color or nationality. From Gabriel García Márquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude I’ve felt the hot, humid and magical air of Columbia; from The Diary of Anais Nin, I learned about Paris during the time of Hemingway, Miller, and Gertrude Stein; from Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country, I felt the distinct melancholy of a doomed affair in the snow-covered western mountains of Japan.
Books open worlds. They focus the reader and open up new ideas.
These are tough, unprecedented times. Refocus and recenter. Open up a new world. Open up a book.
John
What I’m watching:
Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang – A wonderful documentary about the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who is most well known for his use of gunpowder in the production of his artwork. His paintings are painted with controlled explosions. The through-line of the documentary is his attempt to finally complete his “Sky Ladder” – a flaming ladder that ascends to the heavens. Inspirational and aspirational. Check it out.
What I’m reading (apropos of this essay):
THE WRITER’S CHAPBOOK: A COMPENDIUM OF FACT, OPINION, WIT, AND ADVICE FROM “THE PARIS REVIEW” INTERVIEWS – You can get this on Amazon as well. This book is full of the wisdom of past writers, ranging from Toni Morrison to Elena Ferrante to Arthur Miller. I reach for this book whenever I feel stuck in my own writing or just need to creatively procrastinate.
Substance: Inside New Order – by Peter Hook, former bassist for the bands Joy Division and New Order. A funny, irreverent look at the surprisingly debauched story of the birth of New Order from the ashes of Joy Division. If something could go wrong, it inevitably did. Hook is a natural storyteller, so it’s worth a read if you are into music history.
1984 – by George Orwell. Why? Because look around us. We are in an age of misinformation, the rise of nationalism and angry political leaders and rhetoric. Truth is rewritten right in front of our eyes and ears (ie “I was being sarcastic”) and cult-like worship is the order of the day.
The Graveyard Book – by Neil Gaiman, the master storyteller. This is a story about a small boy who lives in a graveyard and is raised by ghosts. It’s not a horror story – at least it’s not the dead that the boy needs to fear. I’m listening to this one as Gaiman has a great voice and gift for narration.
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