A defence* of distracted reading

I’m on vacation. Maybe it’s just the colour or my crystal, or maybe it’s something more primal, but I’m reading on my vacation. And not just a little, and not just ‘easy’ stuff. I’m working through Foucault’s 77-78 lectures, Smith’s Origin of Objects, and Raunig’s A Thousand Machines. Yet, I’m not breaking my back here, I perceive no discomfort while reading these challenging monographs. I am, I’ll admit, distracted. Sometimes I’ll plow through a dozen pages, but typically I’ll read, and re-read, the same pages, very slowly, constantly shifting my gaze, my mental processes, and my attention. It’s a form of slow reading, certainly, because it is very slow.

I’m sitting on a cafe patio, going down every mental rabbit hole I come across. Instead of digging into authorial intent I am deeply contextualizing everything, searching out the meaning of every fleeting idea, phrase, or spark of imagination. And, most importantly, pace Nicholas Carr, I’m am enjoying it. It’s true that I am not flying through these books, and I may even miss some central concepts that the author is trying to pass along, but I am learning, and I truly enjoy it. Distracted ‘Internet-age’ reading is often thought to bring about the end of intelligent reading, turning all these young people into mindless drones with the attention span of a gnat. I’m probably not helping my attention span any, but I’m surely benefitting from reading, and since I enjoy it, I read often, even chronically. Sure, I could maximize my pedagogy by reading carefully and focused, but I’m sure to grow bored, and not just because of the allure of distractions from the Internet, video games, TV and any other electronic ill, rather, I’d grow bored in the same way that students have always grown bored. Instead, reading is an enjoyable, integrated part of my life, it isn’t something that requires tremendous focus or fortitude. I enjoy reading exactly because it isn’t hard, and doesn’t require steely focus.

*not really a defence per se, perhaps more of an exploration of possibility.

Update on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 5:47PM by Quinn

Some (ahem…) think that this blog post is pompous. The point is not that I am reading these books (they could be Calvin and Hobbes, which, I freely admit, I love and read frequently), rather, it is that I enjoy reading them. I don’t enjoy reading them because I am smart (but if you are a potential employer, I am smart), but simply because I contextualize the reading experience. I make it enjoyable. Anyone can do this, I swear.