It’s Banned Books Week, when the left and right blame each other for our sad taste for censorship. A better use of this opportunity would be to recognize the centrality of books to democracy, and to consider what risk we might take from our quick habit of not reading them. How important are books for democracy? First, because of what they symbolize. Consider physical books, not digital text. Through their concreteness and permanence, physical books indicate that thoughts are important. They are fixed in a medium that cannot be changed, the words stamped on the page till the passage of time add to the dust the pages, suggesting that the existence of ideas is contemplated not for a moment but over time should go.
Thus a book is not a mere transmitter of information applicable to a given task; This, according to the great bibliographer Nicholas A. In the coinage of Basbanes, there is “the splendor of letters”. Physically printed sections remind us that it takes time to appreciate good writing and great ideas.
Second, a thriving democracy also hinges on what we read – and in particular, on a willingness to spend time reading great literature. Although lists are essentially incomplete, there is a commonality of language in great works. The great book, to borrow from George Steiner, uses words with such clarity and power that it “collects in itself the sum of life.” Why does this matter for democracy? Because, as social scientists have argued, reading serious literature can increase empathy, a finding that seems especially true when it comes to difficult texts. While this research has its critics, its findings chime with intuition: The complex literature tends to teach us that people are complex. The more we believe in this, the better we are able to see even political opponents join us in the common task of democratic governance.
For example, consider how we might respond to Jay Gatsby if we confront him by stating his sins through a blog post. Certainly we will never develop the sympathetic understanding stirred by Scott Fitzgerald’s story of ambition and disaster. Likewise, were Sethe a stranger whose horrific crime we had heard about on cable news, we might never have been tempted to consider the harsh truths about love and desperation, which are similar to Toni Morrison’s brilliant Prose forces us to take it seriously.
Great literature calls upon us to stop and reflect. But the world we live in is louder and louder, full of alarms and excursions. Thus we well face the question posed by the essayist David Yulin: “How do things stick with us in a culture where information and ideas are so quick that we have time to evaluate one before the other? don’t have time?”
Quick and clangy is always simple. To move fast is to be irreversible. True literature cannot survive in such a forest. It’s the exact point of Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451, a staple of high-school reading lists. For years, Bradbury lamented that readers and interpreters misunderstood the story. His concern was not about state censorship. It was about the fate of the book in a society where people no longer read difficult texts because they rejected complexity. He wanted simplicity, a life unmarried with the challenge of unbearable thoughts. “What can be seditious books!” Captain Beatty, proclaimed its villain, warns that those who read difficult lessons run a terrible risk: they may change their mind.
Complexity is what serious texts teach us. Life is complicated, people are complicated, ideas are complicated: the more we believe in these truths, the more democratic we are. If we stop reading serious books – books that challenge, that slow us down, that force us to think – our sense of commonality in our differences is bound to suffer.
But if I’m right about literature, are physical books really that important? Can’t digital texts convey the same complexity? Although the jury is still out, evidence suggests that reading on a screen is not the same as reading on a page. Studies consistently show that readers of physical books perceive them better than those who read similar texts digitally. These results are also among students who prefer to read digitally rather than read physically. The oft-repeated prediction that differences will fade as a generation of people who grew up reading digitally has so far not been borne out by experimental evidence. I’m not against e-readers—I use my Kindle a lot—and the researchers believe there will be technological improvements to many of these challenges. But even if all the measurable shortcomings of digital reading can be eliminated, our democratic difficulty will remain great if we continue to avoid difficult and challenging literature. What is important is not how well we read, but what we read.
So, to celebrate the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, let’s pledge to read the books that challenge us, more often. This is the best way to prove our love for democracy.
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