Where Read?

In his passionate book, University of Virginia English Professor Mark Edmundson asks Why Read? and provides a compelling answer. But we should also ask: where read? I have been traveling a lot, and I see people reading in just two places:  airplanes and subways (something about metal tubes and forced waiting encourages literacy).  On the other hand, I rarely see students reading in the classroom or the library (too busy checking Facebook, texting, tweeting, or watching ESPN or “pr0n”). Last week in Denver for a conference I visited The Tattered Cover Bookstore.  It was snowing outside but inside were glowing incandescent lights, the smell of ink and paper, old leather chairs, old lamps, old wooden desks, wood bookcases and floor, all showing the patina of human use. Conversely, a few months back, I was in Seattle and visited the Rem Koolhaas-designed Seattle Public Library, a monument to the alienated intimacy of urban life where, as Sarah Goldhagen says, “people are never really alone, but neither are they ever really together.”  We view each other through windows and screens.  The library’s interior is cool, sterile, artificial, replicated, technological.  The architect disorients patrons with oppressive volumes of space, imponderables of scale, and uncertain horizons.  A book seems out of place, intrusive, soiling the metal and plastic.  This place is about INFORMATION, not Imagination. The Tattered Cover promotes reading where the postmodern library discourages it.  If we want to recuperate literacy, we need to give students settings with manifold pleasures for their senses (computer labs need not apply).