Rethinking the National Year of Reading: When Books Challenge More Than They Comfort
The UK's National Year of Reading, a government-led initiative, champions "reading for pleasure" and "the joy of reading." This focus is not without merit; research links childhood reading for pleasure to positive educational and socioeconomic outcomes. However, fourteen years after the Department for Education commissioned a comprehensive report on the subject, reading for pleasure is in crisis, often blamed on smartphone distractions that erode concentration.
The Contradiction of Reading for Pleasure
If reading were inherently pleasurable, wouldn't people naturally gravitate toward it? There's a contradiction in promoting reading for pleasure while emphasizing its extrinsic benefits, such as academic attainment. Moreover, the content of what is read matters profoundly. Historically, societies have recognized that not all reading material is benign. In Jane Austen's Persuasion, Byron's works are cautioned against for melancholy individuals, and in Northanger Abbey, novels require defense. Plato excluded Homer from his Republic due to morally questionable depictions of gods.
Reading is not a virtue in itself; it is an action utilizing evolving technologies like the alphabet, codex, and digital screens. While writing and reading facilitate information dissemination and intellectual opportunities, they can also be harmful. Some books may damage readers, even if enjoyed, much like excessive online activity can be detrimental.
The Flattening of Cultural Experience
The current uncritical reverence for "reading" mirrors the widespread awe for "storytelling." As author Maria Tumarkin noted in her 2014 essay This Narrated Life, packaging experiences into neat stories can violently flatten the complexities of human life. Not all thinking occurs through storytelling, and it inadequately describes artistic communication.
Similarly, framing reading and other cultural activities as "joyful" oversimplifies their emotional range. A recent article by James Murphy, CEO of the Royal Philharmonic Society, extolled the "joy" of classical music, highlighting its uplifting and consoling qualities. While true, this is a partial view. Engaging with art—from Guillaume de Machaut to Cassandra Miller—can evoke dissociation, confusion, anger, or painful memories, not just joy.
Personal Encounters with Unsettling Art
In an amateur orchestra, playing Brahms's Symphony No. 3 brought not joy but a sore neck and haunting phrases from its melancholic depths. Watching Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes as a child was too weird and compelling to be merely enjoyed; it explored compulsive artist relationships.
The same applies to reading. Classicist Mary Beard, this year's Booker prize chair, noted that nonfiction is overlooked in National Year of Reading discussions. Absorbing serious historical or scientific works doesn't fit the "enjoyment" profile. For instance, reading Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz's novel The Passenger, written in 1938 about post-Kristallnacht Berlin, was gripping but not enjoyable. It provoked such intensity that pleasure was irrelevant.
We must expect more from reading than mere enjoyment. Literature can be absorbing, unsettling, and transformative, challenging us to embrace its full emotional spectrum beyond simplistic pleasurable narratives.
