A Fast Read

 

I can read a Mickey Spillane novel in a day.

I read a single episode in which I feel the fear, the heroics, the triumph, the gratification in one pass. No re-reading, no studying, no meditation. Just breeze right through it.

I experience the fear of the victim – a busty blonde, assaulted by a cliché thug … I participate in the anger and indignation of the hero (Mike Hammer), and revel in his brave intervention, and subsequent triumph over evil.

After the assailant is vanquished I delight in the girl’s gratitude, in the much needed bourbon on the rocks in a dark bar, with soft music … the inevitable invitation, the slow quiet stroll – holding hands – to her apartment …

And I thrill in the gluttonous satisfaction of my – uh, that is, of the hero’s reward.

One read through the chapter is enough to feel her softness, my hardness, to submit to the delicious intoxication of her sweaty perfume … to succumb to the obliviousness of exhaustion, the thorough satisfaction, the requisite sleep … the delicious awakening to soft murmurings of gratitude and endearment.

One read. Enough. Reading it again provides no additional insight, no further gratification. No reason to try to relive the experience. One read. Enough.

On the other hand …

I slowly read through a chapter in Lakoff’s “The Political Mind”. Then I stop, and ask myself, “What did you just read?” I re-read the chapter, and gain more understanding. And then again, and find that for clarification I must review the preceding chapter … and then plunge ahead to the next chapter, to delve into the nuances of the concepts that he is so fluently expressing.

It takes an effort.

I have to really work at it to understand what he is saying to me. And it is not a matter of vocabulary, for I know most of the language he presents. It is, rather, that the concepts are so foreign that I have difficulty “wrapping my brain around it.”

This is not such a shock. I am aware that in the hierarchy of intelligence, I am some distance from the top.

(Note that with respect to intelleck I am in the top ninety-five percent of my class.)

For example, I tried to read some of Noam Chomsky’s writing. I gave up. It is to me absolutely incomprehensible.

I tried to rationalize by telling myself that a competent writer always writes to the level of his audience. It is one thing to write for a junior high school text, another to write for an advanced academy of scholarly specialists.

“He is just not talking to me,” I opined. True enough. "But to whom is he writing to?"(sic)

I have since learned that some scholars find his output frustratingly incomprehensible.

Therefore the simple principle, that I must select from those who write to my level.

But the fruit I would pick grows just a little higher off the ground. Therefore must I reach, beyond my grasp.

And re-read. And study. And ponder.

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And then suddenly I have a grasp of a principle that has ever eluded me, but which now provides insight, an understanding of myself that is … well, astounding!