All questions from Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home. The Reading Brain in a Digital World. (New York: Harper, 2019), p. 96. Answers are mine.
Do you read with less attention and perhaps even less memory for what you have read?
Yes. But I find that there is a always a way back to full attention – at least with the ideal book, you know, the one that can pull off being both inviting and original. I feel more comfort in rereading than I used to, too, because it doesn’t demand as much attention or memory capacity. I remember my way around, and rereading reconnects me both to a book I had enjoyed before and to my former self.
Do you notice when reading on a screen that you are increasingly reading for key words and skimming over the rest?
Yes.
Has this habit of screen reading bled over to your reading of hard copy?
Yes. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing, because there are bad books out there that don’t deserve more than browsing. Also, a hard copy still makes serious reading easier and more rewarding, so whenever I can, I read important stuff on paper, and unimportant stuff online.
Do you find yourself reading the same passage over and over to understand its meaning?
Yes. But then again, I was always like this. I was a terrible reader in my first college years – I couldn’t understand anything that academics or serious authors had written. What helped me through was the idea that it was all worth it. Which it probably was: I don’t know who I would be today if I had never had to decipher a play by Shakespeare or an essay by Walter Benjamin.
Do you suspect when you write that your ability to express the crux of your thoughts is subtly slipping or diminished?
No, at least not when writing is important. This is probably because I have always considered myself as a pretty average writer, and practice and patience have always been my elemental tools to write. But I feel that I’m getting more and more careless writing e-mails or texts; sometimes I wish I could just telepathically transmit what I want to say, or not have to say anything at all.
Have you become so inured to quick précis of information that you no longer feel the need or possess the time for your own analyses of this information?
Yes.
Do you find yourself gradually avoiding denser, more complex analyses, even those that are readily available?
Yes. I can’t face the Guardian’s “Long Read”, for example, even if I know it’s probably worth it. At the same time, I often find myself yearning for this kind of writing. Just not today.
Are you less able to find the same enveloping pleasure you once derived from your former reading self?
I think I was never easily immersed in reading; perhaps certain YA Fantasy novels I read when I was a boy did the trick. But after that, immerson has always been hard, frustrating work for me. I get far less immersed in stories than in style, which is probably why I like original literary fiction, and sometimes even poetry.
Have you, in fact, begun to suspect that you no longer have the cerebral patience to plow through a long and demanding article or book?
Yes. My patience has definitely shrunk. But sometimes I feel a craving to conquer the most difficult of texts, and then when I’m humiliated, I find my way back to healthy, mid-range material, regain my strength, and attack the big ones again.
What if, one day, you pause and wonder if you yourself are truly changing and, worst of all, do not have the time to do a thing about it?
Sometimes I think if I hadn’t chosen to teach Deep Reading – which thankfully forces me to read interesting stuff all the time and also makes me try to write better stuff myself – I may have lost contact to one of the most enjoyable parts of life already.
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