Off to the reading state

Posted August 31st, 2021.
Cataloged under Deep reading, Flow, Sven Birkerts and Writing

The heightened state brought on by a book—in which one is “actively present at every moment, scripting and constructing”—is what readers seek, Birkerts argues: “They want plot and character, sure, but what they really want is a vehicle that will bear them off to the reading state.”

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Birkerts on the diminishment of literature

Posted August 27th, 2021. (Permalink)
Cataloged under Distraction, Deep reading and Sven Birkerts

Writing in 1994, [Sven Birkerts] worried that distractedness and surficiality would win out. The “duration state” we enter through a turned page would be lost in a world of increasing speed and relentless connectivity, and with it our ability to make meaning out of narratives, both fictional and lived. The diminishment of literature—of sustained reading, of writing as the product of a single focused mind—would diminish the self in turn, rendering us less and less able to grasp both the breadth of our world and the depth of our own consciousness.

Deep time

Posted August 27th, 2021. (Permalink)
Cataloged under Deep reading, Sven Birkerts and Time

I can still find, slipped like a note between the pages, what Birkerts calls the “time of the self… deep time, duration time, time that is essentially characterized by our obliviousness to it.” The gift of reading, the gift of any encounter with art, is that this time spent doesn’t leave me when I lift my eyes from the book in my lap: it lingers, for a minute or a day.