The Crisis of Reading by Miriam Intrator

This dilemma affects me so fiercely because I am passionate about and dedicated to researching how books, reading, libraries and stories have helped to console, distract, entertain and educate suffering people in the past, and how they continue to do so today. I have spent the past four years immersed in the early stages of a search for evidence of Jews using libraries and reading and the sharing of books and stories as elements in their struggle to survive under Nazi control during the Holocaust. Thus far my focus has been on the ghetto concentration camp Theresienstadt. Having discovered that many did indeed consider reading and stories vital to their survival, I am convinced of the absolute necessity of continuing and expanding this research, and feel a sense of urgency to do so. The tired ambiguity I currently feel toward these long-trusted and life-affirming tools, therefore, sparks a deep flood of empty unfamiliarity and frustration within my reading body. Weary unease pools inside my right eye socket, where pressure surrounds the eyeball like a squishy stress ball clutched in a gently tightening palm. Seeking release, I yearn to restore my desire and need to read, which now teeter awkwardly on the edges of my shifting reader’s consciousness.

Treading uncertainly amidst this whirlwind of churning pages, I grasp onto two hopeful idea threads to ground me. The first is the realization that I must coax out, extract, the active and interactive reader who exists, with mouth ready to speak, invisibly hidden beneath my solo, more passive and quiet reader surface self. The second is the realization that deciding to become an academic, even more than deciding to become a librarian (which I already am), is to admit an obsession with books, with texts, ideas and learning, and to commit to that obsession. Caught in the early tumult of this new commitment, I find myself putting up great resistance, no doubt contributing to the vision dimming headaches, icicle-cracked neck vertebra, shrinking right eye, and brow that seems to no longer unfurrow. I grudgingly admit that the source of my (body, brain, feeling) unsettled discomfort is not only the endless and sometimes numbing books I have to read, but also of my stubbornly ingrained perception of what reading is and what it should be for me.

I grew up in the company of many full bookshelves lined with fiction and non-fiction, their visible backbones displaying all colors, ages, materials and stages of wear, and revealing titles in English, French, Portuguese, German and Hebrew. The most appealing books to handle were worn soft and curved, exuding the irresistible scent of musty frayed paper and leather, their aged outer texture seeming to hold as many stories and possibilities as the texts contained within. My reading mother (who favors fiction and texts on psychology, counseling and Judaism) has long been active in a woman’s book group and my reading father (who is partial to science fiction, short stories and science, especially space and physics texts) led me and my sister on weekly Saturday visits to the local library. Viewed together, my parent’s reading habits and literary preferences offered me an early glimpse into how reading can be multifunctional: social or solitary, professional or educational, and can meet needs anywhere along an immense continuum, from distraction to pleasure and everyplace in between.

Ever since I learned to read, the escape, solace, information and opportunity offered by books have been critical elements within my personal, internal realm. As a shy reader, books helped me fortify pathways of connection to the external world, linking me moment to moment, word by word, more simply than spoken language could. I experience reading as an intensely inner and enclosed activity. Relying on books to nourish both the inside and out of my being has led me to recognize how the deep intimacy of reading can be wonderfully insulating, as well as surprisingly revealing. I have never much liked to discuss, analyze, or even write about what I read (short stories and non-fiction, particularly literary, bibliophilic, historic, culinary and Judaic), although I rather like when others do in so far as their chatter can lead me to (or from) books I have not yet read and might not otherwise have come upon.

My disinclination to communicate as a reader generated internal opposition to reading-related assignments at an early age. Although I did well in school, the task of decoding, interpreting or simply regurgitating what the author was “really trying to say” struck me as pretentious, presumptuous, even futile. After all, isn’t each reader’s voice as subjective and unique as each author’s? Why try to explain, or worse, press upon another, my own fingerprint of understanding? Or feel forced to accept that of another? Rather, digestion and understanding of a text, in my view, was best achieved through unspoken mental rather than oral contemplation of the words and ideas. The first person to truly crack this shuttered shield and who began to convince me that speaking and writing about books could be as satisfying and productive as reading them, was a remarkable professor I had in library school. Dr. Carr elucidated how being a reader, loving books and libraries, and caring and learning about other readers could not only guide my personal life, but also inspire my professional life.

Already, putting these words to paper is helping me frame and articulate the challenge I am confronting, that is, to mentally rearrange and expand the capacity of my reading self. This requires a deconstruction (as documented here) of my original, oversimplified, narrow tunnel approach, followed by what will no doubt be a lifelong reconstruction to ever widen the road I read along. I am juggling for a rewarding new balance between silence and speech, between individual thought and group discussion, between reading what I must with little time for what I want. I successfully completed my first semester as a doctoral student and look forward to the start of the next, yet my inclination to select and read a book, even for my own pleasure, remains more diminished than I am familiar or at ease with. Nevertheless, turning to the written word is what I know and in thinking and writing this I was drawn to the expressions of others on the subject of reading. I came upon an essay I had never encountered before, “The Solace of Books” by Israel Abrahams, published in 1911. Captivating in its entirety, one sentence in particular resonates with blunt immediacy. I read and reread it: “Reading profits most when, beside the book, you have someone with whom to talk about the book.” The belief that discussion, interaction and commentary are at least as important as whatever is contained in the original text is of course an extremely Jewish conviction. It seems it is time for me to accept, embrace, and act upon this very vocal aspect of my inheritance. As a determined and committed doctoral student, as well as a shy reader, devoted librarian and quiet learner, I recognize this transition and evolution as a growth and expansion that will occur without any disquieting loss of deep-rooted identity. The shift in my relationship with books and reading promises to remain a critical aspect in the formation of my academic self, as well as in the continuation of my private self.


		Miriam Intrator
		The Crisis of Reading
		Les hautes falaises que toujours tu portes en toi, ouvre-les pour une Parole, ouvre une aube dans le roc. The high cliffs that you always carry inside of you, open them for a Word, open a dawn in the rock. – Edouard Glissant The transition to life as a doctoral student is distinctly unlike any change, academic or otherwise, I have previously negotiated. After just one semester, barely enough time for me to have stumble-fingered through the first few pages of the thick tome of years remaining, I am exhausted. (This is normal of course). An unanticipated shift in my relationship with books and reading, however, upends my entire understanding of who I am as a reader, as a person for whom reading and visiting libraries and bookstores are idyllic activities. This crisis of reading specifically concerns the heightened fatigue and word-overwhelm ensuing from the exaggerated consumption and analysis of text required as a doctoral student. Insufficiently offset by the soothing joy fragments that usually accompany what has been a lifelong favored activity, the function of books in my reading-living reality is in some disarray. Suddenly, I am a reader who does not always want to read but who now must read and who is also afraid to stop reading. This dilemma affects me so fiercely because I am passionate about and dedicated to researching how books, reading, libraries and stories have helped to console, distract, entertain and educate suffering people in the past, and how they continue to do so today. I have spent the past four years immersed in the early stages of a search for evidence of Jews using libraries and reading and the sharing of books and stories as elements in their struggle to survive under Nazi control during the Holocaust. Thus far my focus has been on the ghetto concentration camp Theresienstadt. Having discovered that many did indeed consider reading and stories vital to their survival, I am convinced of the absolute necessity of continuing and expanding this research, and feel a sense of urgency to do so. The tired ambiguity I currently feel toward these long-trusted and life-affirming tools, therefore, sparks a deep flood of empty unfamiliarity and frustration within my reading body. Weary unease pools inside my right eye socket, where pressure surrounds the eyeball like a squishy stress ball clutched in a gently tightening palm. Seeking release, I yearn to restore my desire and need to read, which now teeter awkwardly on the edges of my shifting reader’s consciousness. Treading uncertainly amidst this whirlwind of churning pages, I grasp onto two hopeful idea threads to ground me. The first is the realization that I must coax out, extract, the active and interactive reader who exists, with mouth ready to speak, invisibly hidden beneath my solo, more passive and quiet reader surface self. The second is the realization that deciding to become an academic, even more than deciding to become a librarian (which I already am), is to admit an obsession with books, with texts, ideas and learning, and to commit to that obsession. Caught in the early tumult of this new commitment, I find myself putting up great resistance, no doubt contributing to the vision dimming headaches, icicle-cracked neck vertebra, shrinking right eye, and brow that seems to no longer unfurrow. I grudgingly admit that the source of my (body, brain, feeling) unsettled discomfort is not only the endless and sometimes numbing books I have to read, but also of my stubbornly ingrained perception of what reading is and what it should be for me. I grew up in the company of many full bookshelves lined with fiction and non-fiction, their visible backbones displaying all colors, ages, materials and stages of wear, and revealing titles in English, French, Portuguese, German and Hebrew. The most appealing books to handle were worn soft and curved, exuding the irresistible scent of musty frayed paper and leather, their aged outer texture seeming to hold as many stories and possibilities as the texts contained within. My reading mother (who favors fiction and texts on psychology, counseling and Judaism) has long been active in a woman’s book group and my reading father (who is partial to science fiction, short stories and science, especially space and physics texts) led me and my sister on weekly Saturday visits to the local library. Viewed together, my parent’s reading habits and literary preferences offered me an early glimpse into how reading can be multifunctional: social or solitary, professional or educational, and can meet needs anywhere along an immense continuum, from distraction to pleasure and everyplace in between. Ever since I learned to read, the escape, solace, information and opportunity offered by books have been critical elements within my personal, internal realm. As a shy reader, books helped me fortify pathways of connection to the external world, linking me moment to moment, word by word, more simply than spoken language could. I experience reading as an intensely inner and enclosed activity. Relying on books to nourish both the inside and out of my being has led me to recognize how the deep intimacy of reading can be wonderfully insulating, as well as surprisingly revealing. I have never much liked to discuss, analyze, or even write about what I read (short stories and non-fiction, particularly literary, bibliophilic, historic, culinary and Judaic), although I rather like when others do in so far as their chatter can lead me to (or from) books I have not yet read and might not otherwise have come upon. My disinclination to communicate as a reader generated internal opposition to reading-related assignments at an early age. Although I did well in school, the task of decoding, interpreting or simply regurgitating what the author was “really trying to say” struck me as pretentious, presumptuous, even futile. After all, isn’t each reader’s voice as subjective and unique as each author’s? Why try to explain, or worse, press upon another, my own fingerprint of understanding? Or feel forced to accept that of another? Rather, digestion and understanding of a text, in my view, was best achieved through unspoken mental rather than oral contemplation of the words and ideas. The first person to truly crack this shuttered shield and who began to convince me that speaking and writing about books could be as satisfying and productive as reading them, was a remarkable professor I had in library school. Dr. Carr elucidated how being a reader, loving books and libraries, and caring and learning about other readers could not only guide my personal life, but also inspire my professional life. Already, putting these words to paper is helping me frame and articulate the challenge I am confronting, that is, to mentally rearrange and expand the capacity of my reading self. This requires a deconstruction (as documented here) of my original, oversimplified, narrow tunnel approach, followed by what will no doubt be a lifelong reconstruction to ever widen the road I read along. I am juggling for a rewarding new balance between silence and speech, between individual thought and group discussion, between reading what I must with little time for what I want. I successfully completed my first semester as a doctoral student and look forward to the start of the next, yet my inclination to select and read a book, even for my own pleasure, remains more diminished than I am familiar or at ease with. Nevertheless, turning to the written word is what I know and in thinking and writing this I was drawn to the expressions of others on the subject of reading. I came upon an essay I had never encountered before, “The Solace of Books” by Israel Abrahams, published in 1911. Captivating in its entirety, one sentence in particular resonates with blunt immediacy. I read and reread it: “Reading profits most when, beside the book, you have someone with whom to talk about the book.” The belief that discussion, interaction and commentary are at least as important as whatever is contained in the original text is of course an extremely Jewish conviction. It seems it is time for me to accept, embrace, and act upon this very vocal aspect of my inheritance. As a determined and committed doctoral student, as well as a shy reader, devoted librarian and quiet learner, I recognize this transition and evolution as a growth and expansion that will occur without any disquieting loss of deep-rooted identity. The shift in my relationship with books and reading promises to remain a critical aspect in the formation of my academic self, as well as in the continuation of my private self.
		Miriam Intrator is photo archivist and registrar at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, and a first-year doctoral student in history at CUNY. Her research has been published in Libri, The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, and is forthcoming in Library Trends. She has recently presented papers at Beyond Numbers, Beyond Names: The Experience of Holocaust Victims, Library History Seminar XI, and the Women and the Holocaust Conference in Israel, as well as to numerous public audiences, including as a lecturer for Jewish Heritage Month 2006 at the Brooklyn Public Library.
		© Miriam Intrator All Rights Reserved