CONTROL THAT HABIT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 796, 22 October 1954, Page 18

CONTROL THAT HABIT

A Remedy for Reading, by

A. R. D.

FAIRBURN

AM constantly amazed at the almost sacred character that attaches, in general public estimation, to the practice of reading. I know all the arguments in favour of literacy. Civilisation depends, as we all know, on intercommunication, and on the storing of knowledge in some more or less permanent form of record. But this last might be done very economically indeed. If blueprints and specifications of a few simple gadgets such as the zip-fastener and the wheelbarrow were to be placed in a lead casket and buried in some safe place, our duty to posterity would be adequately fulfilled. There can be little else that would be of real help to the people of the post-diluvian, or post-cobalt, world-and

in any case, why deprive them of the fun of finding things out for themselves? Granted that reading and writing have some sort of functional importance to us-granted that we should not know which brand of chlorophyll toothpaste or natty nylon shirtings to buy if we could not read advertisements-I am still astonished that anybody should think that ninety-nine hundredths of the reading. we do is of any real consequence. Take the fiction we get from our libraries, for example. From the point of view of self-improvement and soul-culture, can it be said that this sort of stuff does us any good? Admittedly, it is better than back-biting, or nailbiting, or week-end golf. It hélps--us to avoid conversation, soothes the nerves, and prevents us from getting wet and catching a chill. But that is really all there is to be said for it. The thing is vastly overdone. We all read too much at the breakfast and dinner table, and most of us fall into the even more vicious habit of reading between meals, I know this sort of talk is bad for business, but sooner or later someone has to be honest and speak up about these matters. A by-product of this drift towards universal literacy is the Free Public Library System. This is completely sacrosanct. It came out of 19th Century

industrialism, which by common agreement made a desert of England’s green and pleasant land. In 1888 any humane and liberal-minded man. looking fore and aft, must have been in favour of giving the depressed poor free access to books. There is still a good case for it, where poverty exists. Doynot think for a moment that I wish anybody to be prevented from reading anything he wishes to read. Every man has an inalienable right to choose his own path to damnation. and if he elects to do it by reading Hegel, I shall go as far as buying the poison for him, if necessary. But I fail to see why I should subsidise him, for either salvation or damnation, when he is as well off as I am. \Wherever the Free Public Library system is attacked, some public man will

rise to defend it with the single-hearted passion of Sir Galahad helping one of King Arthur’s Court ladies out of a fix. He. poor fellow, like Sir Galahad, is thinking in terms of 1888. He is probably an Idealist. He had better beware. Idealists are, on the whole, very nice people. But there is a special nemesis that dogs the footsteps of all those who have starry eyes. I once knew an elderly and benevolent backyard philosopher who, for most of his lifetime, had been under the spell of the Fabian movement. *He would often drop in for a chat, and spend long hours talking to me when I might otherwise have been frittering away the time doing a job of some sort. He spoke much of brotherly love, and saw no reason why harmony and universal trust should not reign on earth. His eyes shone with charity and his tones became mellow and vibrant when he hotted up to his theme. Time passed. I came upon him one afternoon crawling around underneath the big hedge skirting his orchard. The boys had been getting through gaps and stealing his fruit. He had a large number of bottles, and he was breaking these with a hammer and scattering the bits in the open spaces under the hedge. His muttering was a frightful thing to listen to, and he was far past conversation of any sort. I left him.

I do hope that none of my hypothetical but quite real public men will not suffer a like revulsion, and fall like Icarus from the heaven of their idealism. It would embarrass us all if they were found scattering broken bottles in the portico of the public library. F I may make my point more simply, without the encumbrance of anecdote, it is this: In 1888 my heart would have bled for some freckle-faced lad of twelve who, for lack of an occasional few pence, would never read Pepys, or Sterne, or the plays of John Ford, But almost anywhere in the English-speak-ing world today the same kid, or his grandson, will regularly scrounge a bob from Mum to go to the flicks and see Virginia Mayo in’ Jungle Love. Two

hours of genteel and sophisticated pleasure for the sum of one shilling, Why then quibble about threepence or sixpence for a book that is going to keep him amused for three whole nights? ° Returning. to my more general theme -that reading is on the whole a timewasting habit of which all of us, men, women and children are the victimsI have a remedy to put forward. If we cannot conquer our vices, we must make the best of them. I long since found a way of dealing with the problem of newspapers. One day, after reading a paper with quiet satisfaction for half an hour or so, I happened to glance at its date-line, and realised that I had somehow picked ‘up ‘one that was just over a year old. It was a good paper, nice and newsy. I have continued to

read it every morning, ever since. I miss very little in the way of reliable knowledge or even sensation by not bothering to keep up with current newspapers. From day to day the news may vary a little in detail, but in general pattern it remains much the same. Having found a really good newspaper, I stick to it. Anyway, the historians are still arguing the point about the Charge of the Light Brigade, and whether Richard the Second ‘really. did strangle those two princes in the Tower, so what hope has the journalist of giving us the facts about something that happened only yesterday? I shall catch up with current events later on in the history-books, even then keeping in mind that the whole business is, at the best, rather chancy, Meanwhile I enjoy reading my newspaper every morning. My solution of the problem of rationalising book-reading is based on a rather different principle. It offers a noble compromise by which every one of us may attain the highest degree of satisfaction from his reading, with a great economy jin man-hours. Take, as a basis of discussion, the crime fiction that forms such a large part of our literary diet. Very willingly would I read every book written by Mr. Raymond Chandler and Mr. Rex Stout. But there are other thrillers that are a shade less rewarding, and a great many others again that are not worth their weight in chopped hay. Can anything be done about this situation? I believe it can. My solution is the Fairburn Collapsible Library System (pat. appl. for). I shall have to do a little explaining. Suppose that you are sitting quietly and somebody creeps up behind and gives you a crack over the head with a length of lead piping or a stocking-full of billiard balls. You pass out. Some hours later you come to, feeling just as full of beans as any Peter Cheyney | character who has undergone a similar experience. A remarkable fact soon emerges. Not only do you not remember what happened to you; but the train of thought running through your mind for some minutes, or hours, or even days before the blow fell is completely erased. You have forgiven your debtors, and ,jhave probably forgotten all about your debts. This condition, so my panel of medical advisers inférms me, is known as retrograde amnesia. It can also be brought about very handily by electric shock treatment. It offers the key to our problem. ; My great inspiration came to me one night when I had just finished re-reading The Riddle of the Sands after a lapse of twenty-five years. "What an admirable book," I said to myself. "And what a pity I shall not be able to read it again for another twenty-five years." Then it hit me-not the lead piping, just at that

moment, but the idea. A few days previously an uncle of mine had suffered a blow on the head when his wife dropped a brick in company, and had undergone a retrograde amnesia. Why not (I suddenly thought) get somebody to crack me over the head? There must be lots of people who are itching to do it. If I could by this means produce a condition of retrograde amnesia I could read The Riddle of the Sands all over again tomorrow night. With repeated treatments-perhaps the electric shock method might be more congenial -I could go on re-reading it as often as I liked. Out of this simple notion has been evolved the Fairburn Collapsible Library System (pat. appl. for). Why not collapse your library? You pick out the half-dozen books you love bestbooks of different kinds, the best of each kind. You go right on reading them. You don’t ever have to put up with second-best or worse just to fill up the gaps in the long winter even-

ings. You get the very best all the time. And your shelyes don’t get clogged with books. Elementary, but shattering — agreed? As fundamental as logarithms, as epochmaking as the hair-pin, But hark, I must summon my bodyguard. I see a deputation of authors and publishers coming up the drive armed with bill-hooks and rolled umbrellas.