The Owl Has Flown response

“Reading has a history. It was not always and everywhere the same. …the history of reading could be as complex as the history of thinking.”
Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette

Reading is certainly changing in our society. Newspapers for example, are rapidly becoming anachronistic, as electronic media gives readers greater choices, faster, and more convenient access, and easier acquisition of articles of interest. There are more “magazines” available electronically than at any news stand. Books are on line where they can be instantly accessed, passages googled, compared, and cross-referenced by author, genre, era, similar quotes…etc. Volume of information, material to read, and access to reading has grown to levels never seen in history. With seemingly infinite access to reading material, there may be unknown sacrifices being made. I believe reading and writing are both in transition, inseparable and irreversible. We have a responsibility to acknowledge the reality.

In the opening sentence to Sven Birkirt’s essay, The Owl Has Flown he asserts, “Reading and thinking are kindred operations”. He believes how we receive information bears vitally on the ways we experience and interpret reality. Readers, awed and intimidated by the availability of texts, tend to move across the surfaces, skimming, hastening from one site to the next without allowing the words to resonate inwardly. We may be sacrificing depth to lateral range. We know countless more “bits” of information without a stable sense of context. The lack of a larger perspective hobbles the mind.

The heart and soul of this essay brings these observations together where he states, “We are experiencing in our times a loss of depth-a loss, that is, of the very paradigm of depth. A sense of the deep and natural connectedness of things is a function of vertical consciousness. Its apotheosis is what was once called wisdom. Wisdom: the knowing not of facts but of truths about human nature and the processes of life.”

Wisdom comes, not from understanding, but in understanding why. Wisdom is the ability to use the knowledge gained through living, having judgment and principles, along with discernment to effectively apply the ability. I agree that depth has been sacrificed and context is missing from contemporary literacy, both in reading and in writing.

Our culture is in transition and traditional methods of measuring literacy are being reevaluated. The assessment of contemporary literary skills has demonstrated some surprising discoveries. A Stanford University professor of writing and rhetoric, Andrea Lunsford, says, “the modern world of online writing is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than…letter and essay writing of 50 years ago”. She adds, “I think we’re in the midst of a literary revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization”.

Lunsford’s research did not address reading or depth of exposure to literature. I agree that the volume of writing has dramatically increased, but I question whether the depth of understanding of classical literature warrants the comparison with “Greek civilization”. The significance of the comparison is lost without depth of understanding in the historical reference. This is the civilization that is universally given credit as the foundation for all of western civilization today, the civilization that is given credit as the first democracy established in the world. In comparing their writing to the Greeks, she has set the bar very high for the students or a low bar for herself.

It’s unreasonable to expect or believe there is a literacy revolution where a student will have 100% name recognition, and dozens of essays will be familiar to every adult in 2600 years from now, but this is the story of Aesop’s fables.
Ancient Greece left western civilization this legacy:
· Aesop
· Solon, an elegiac poet and Athenian lawmaker often credited as the man responsible for the first democracy
· the Iliad by Homer
· Odyssey by Homer.

Still significant to western society with Classical Greece as the birthplace is:
· Theatron (the seeing place) theater.
· Dialogos dialogue introduced at theatron by Aeschylus.
· Tragoidia Greek tragedy plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
· Komoidia Aristophanes wrote comedy (many followed)
· Teachings of Socrates, whose discussions on ethics are still being taught today.
· Writings of Plato on philosophy, logic, rhetoric, science, mathematics.
· Writings of Plutarch

Exposure to classic works of great authors teaches appreciation of nuance in writing. While contemporary writing of text messages and email may use words that have meaning to the reader, there are authors whose use of style grabs you, holds you, reaches inside and touches you, where you see the colors, feel the warmth, taste the subtle flavor of the words. Lunsford found that students were remarkably adept at assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. Words can also tell a story, take the reader by the hand to lead them to a familiar and comfortable place where the author and the reader are sharing in a journey.

I wonder, with immediate access to seemingly unlimited resources, and the ability to instantly navigate to the core of literature without allowing the author time to take your hand, and walk you through their story, if you can hear their voice? There’s more to every story than the words put on the page. Behind the words, under the letters, between the lines, inside the phrase, there is more waiting to be found. Each word, sentence, or phrase can come alive on the page to arouse, inspire, enchant, and enlighten. I believe the volume of electronic media accessible creates a need to quickly skim the text, limiting creativity and depth of understanding. Without depth there is no context to the story, connection with the style, sentiment, tone, passion, or mood being developed.

The Iliad has been credited by some as possibly the oldest written story in western civilization. It has been dated as old as 800 B.C., and generally to around 600 B.C. Even then most stories were recited orally, including the Iliad, and reading was not common until the last few centuries. History has documented dramatic changes in western society in the last century from few books being owned, to hundreds of books in the home with reading being commonplace, and now we’re overwhelmed with options, so we have to choose. Is it too late to build an anchor of depth, a foundation of substance with connection to meaning? It seems to me that being pulled headlong into the future, looking back at “depth” and “wisdom”, most will decide it’s easier to redefine those attributes and qualities as meaningless? Birkirts hinted at this possibility when he wrote, “…a relativism resembling cognitive and moral paralysis may result.” “When everything is permitted”, Nietzsche said, “we have nihilism.” This, I believe, is where we’re headed, we are making history.

“Reading has a history. It was not always and everywhere the same. …the history of reading could be as complex as the history of thinking.”
Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette