Pleasure Through Difficulty

I read somewhere a few months ago an interview with Alberto Manguel, the Canadian writer, editor and anthologist, and marked down a phrase that resonated with me. I may not have it word for word, but he expressed something along the line that “reading is pleasure through difficulty.” What lay behind this thought, if I remember correctly, was the argument that the pleasure we derive from reading comes from a willed and directed action.

Let’s look a little closer at this argument. Much of what brings us pleasure comes from a passive attitude: hearing music in whatever form, viewing painting and sculpture or any of the plastic arts. Theatre and movies are a combination of these two; all we have to do is to put ourselves in their vicinity. The enjoyment of nature, the pleasure of the outdoors, the experience of a different place, the company of family and friends, all fall within these parameters. To enjoy the written word, however, is something completely different.

Reading for pleasure a very deliberate action. It has to be separated from other reading activities such as to gain information, to find explanations or directions, and all the other uses we find to communicate by the written word. To become “literate,” to gain the ability to read and write, takes a lot of work long before any true “pleasure” can come from it. A person who cannot read or write well finds no pleasure in such activity.
Once you have attained a level of skill, you can begin to read material that may have no application to your daily life. Reading for pleasure takes the imagination and applies it to words and concepts, the stories of places and people, or emotional and rational suggestions that move our spirit in a way that makes us feel good about ourselves and our world, that gives us pleasure.

Choice and effort, we see, are the twin foundations of enjoyment through reading. So how does a poet make these choices easier for his intended audience/readership? Remember, unless it is forced upon the reader he will have no reason whatsoever in these times to approach poetry for fun. The poet must make it pleasurable. Any concept hidden in language not familiar to his audience is soon forgotten except for by a few critics and cognoscenti. This seems to point to two things. A poet should make his words and ideas accessible to as many as possible and he should do his best to present them in a memorable way. There are poets I read whose words ring though the depths of me but who bore me when they read for an audience. There are also poets whose poems leave me cold until I can hear their voice echoing inside my mind. And occasionally a miracle happens – the poet who sounds great on the stage and still sings from the page.

Those are the ones I go back to, again and again. They make me feel the pleasure of reading and make me glad I am literate.

And the difficulty of reading is worth all the effort.

Literate Rock

Rock and roll can be a strange beast. A lot of the music will set your toes tapping, involve you in a peripheral way. Some will take you over so physically that you can't help but move your body, to make you dance. And there is a small segment that urges you to listen, to hear the words as well as the music, to sense the combination that makes it more than tune and lyrics.

I was at a concert the other night celebrating the release of a new recording by Tiny Bill Cody and the Liquormen. One of the reasons I have always liked Tiny Bill's music is because he is a writer as well as a musician, an artist expressing himself in several disciplines. The performance and the new disc carry on with his established reputation.

I like what he does to me, moves me physically and mentally. I can't turn off either mode of perception. For me, most classical music doesn't need the body; much of modern music doesn't engage the mind. Granted, there are singer/songwriter/poets that engage all the modalities; Cohen and Dylan stand out for me. A good blues number will engage my soul and leave mind and body behind. But a driving beat and the crash and flash of new images in the language carry for me a special magic. And much of it depends on the words, the poetry, the way the Taupin/John combination did for me years ago.

Yes, you can set literature to music. The music need not be etherial, contemplative, nor primally rhythmic. The nature of art is that it adapts to what it needs and the result is more and greater art.

The Rise and Fall of Literacy

"I'd like to teach the world to read ..."

It's been going on for some time now, this push toward a literate world. Programs specifically designed to help young and old read, to work with written language, are found everywhere: among the disadvantaged in the developed world as well as the unlettered in the developing world. The order has rung out around the globe that the whole world shall read.

And when we learn to read, what happens? We move away from the simple magic so swiftly to embrace a technology that requires minimal effort. We translate knowledge, we transmit information, we experience our environment, through video screens. We move away from written language; wilfully we become 'a-literate.'

Some people travel by cruise ship to Alaska and watch the glaciers calve from the comfort of a bar/lounge on closed circuit TV. Only a meter or so away they could see it with the naked eye.

Why read newspapers? TV brings it quicker, adds motion and commentary, requires less thought and time. Why read books? The good ones will be out in a screen version soon. Magazines? Those are information shows on TV, aren't they?

And words transmitted on screens become abreviations, compressions, symbols. A new language that is non-language.

From unliterate to illiterate to literate to a-literate. And the world goes round and round.