I'm
making my way through a number of works by Arthur Schopenhauer . This
particular essay counts as among my favorites. Since we are all
booklovers here on Goodreads, I wanted to share my comments linked with
specific quotes from the great German thinker. Here goes:
“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.”
Lets
take Ned who is interested in philosophy, specifically questions
relating to epistomology, the scope and limits on how we know what we
know. Instead of working things out for himself, Ned immediately spends
all his time reading what other philosophers have written on the
subject. And when, in turn, Ned speaks to people, he simply quotes the
great philosophers rather than sharing his own thinking. This is what
Schopenhauer is driving at here.
However, Schopenhauer's observation doesn't address the entire spectrum of what it means to read. For example, Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities
can act as the raw material where a reader will create each city based
on the power of imagination. “Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes,
bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal
theater, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower.” Oh, the city
we as reader can envision, including the shape of each silver dome, the
number and style of those bronze statues, the theater's gleaming
crystal architecture, the complexity (or elegant simplicity) of
intertwining streets, all the ways a golden cock might crow.
“So
it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading,
and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless
pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man
who always rides, at last forgets how to walk.”
Not true! How
many books did Anthony Burgess or Michiko Kakutani or James Wood read?
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, for sure. And reading all those
books contributed to the depth of their insights, their ability to shape
language and, of course, developing their own unique writing style.
“This
is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves
stupid. For to occupy every spare moment in reading, and to do nothing
but read, is even more paralyzing to the mind than constant manual
labor, which at least allows those engaged in it to follow their own
thoughts.”
I wonder how Schopenhauer would judge time spent
reading in our current day where a huge swath of humanity spends the
majority of their time in front of a television set and on their cell
phone.
“Herodotus relates that Xerxes wept at the sight of his
army, which stretched further than the eye could reach, in the thought
that of all these, after a hundred years, not one would be alive. And in
looking over a huge catalogue of new books, one might weep at thinking
that, when ten years have passed, not one of them will be heard of.”
Ha!
Sorry to say, there is great truth in Schopenhauer's observation. Take a
look at a best seller list from the 1990s. How many titles do you
recognize? This to say, a wise reader will devote a considerable amount
of time to reading the classics.
“What can be more miserable
than the lot of a reading public like this, always bound to peruse the
latest works of extremely commonplace persons who write for money only,
and who are therefore never few in number?”
This quote links up
nicely with a Schopenhauer aphorism I'm especially fond of, where he
says good books are not like bread, the fresher the better, but like
wine, the more aged the better. 
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860
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