The Dangers of Reading Fiction

Thomas Jefferson wrote this to a friend:

“A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading. Reason and fact, plain and unadorned, are rejected. Nothing can engage attention unless dressed in all the figments of fancy, and nothing so bedecked comes amiss. The result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all the real businesses of life. The mass of trash, however, is not without some distinction; some few modeling their narratives, although fictitious, on the incidents of real life, have been able to make them interesting and useful vehicles of a sound morality . . . For like reason, too, much poetry should not be indulged. Some is useful for forming style and taste. Pope, Dryden, Thompson, Shakespeare, and of the French, Molière, Racine, the Corneilles, may be read with pleasure and improvement.”

Whoa, Tom! And what’s your opinion on crack?

Actually, I can see what he means. I am nearly 50 years and, at my advanced time of life, it’s shocking how I conduct myself with regard to what I read. Nowadays, I really should peruse the newspaper each day like I was cramming for a final exam. And I’m not talking about the funnies or my horoscope either. Should I stray into the sports section, I know I need keep it to only checking the scores and then get out of there as fast as I can. My father, when he was 50, faithfully read the newspaper and The Consulting Engineer, a trade journal that I skimmed over once or twice and decided it made my head hurt too much. There’s plenty of “serious” reading out there for me, things to do with world politics, mutual funds, ethics, and all the other subjects the Harvard Book Store puts in its front window. At the very least, I could read the trade journals that apply to my field.

William Manchester in his book, The Glory and the Dream, made fun of the people who scanned the front page of the paper and then went directly to the comics and sports. Was he spying on me? Because that’s exactly what I do. I know just enough about what’s going on to be conversant with someone during a 30 second elevator trip, but please don’t probe too far into my depth of knowledge. I have general opinions about everything, but I doubt I could ever defend any of them against a contrary-minded person who is better informed. Every now and again I get lucky and am able to bring up a snatch of information I heard on the radio that morning while eating my breakfast, and my listener thereby is fooled into thinking I subscribe to Time or Newsweek. But no. It’s not that way at all.

Do I read? Yes, I read a lot. I don’t have enough free time to become a voracious reader, but I do pretty well with the time allotted me. But it’s all fiction. Ordinarily I keep two books going on at once, the one that I read and the other that I listen to. For instance, I just finished listening to The DaVinci Code and I’m working my way through all the novels of Carson McCullers. I read plenty of the highbrow stuff, like Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, Austen, the Brontes, etc., and I go in for purely escapist novels by authors like Ken Follett and Michael Crichton. A secret delight of mine are the Tarzan stories, and I adore Sherlock Holmes and anything written by W. Somerset Maugham. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what crap is and keep away from it. But it’s all, as I say, fiction. The closest I get to serous reading are the historical novels, and who knows what the authors had done to the facts in those.

Fiction reading, for me, is a drug. I seek the oblivion that works of fantasy give me like the junkie gropes for his needle and the opium smoker his pipe. I don’t go anywhere without a book. When I go to the movies (another fiction source Tom would clearly disapprove of), I always arrive a half hour early to ensure a good seat and am careful to bring my Itty Bitty Book Light in case the theatre is too dark for reading. I’ve taken the family to Disneyworld three times and I distinguish the visits in my memory not by the dates but by which book I was reading as I stood in the lines. My wife and I went to Hawaii once. Gone with the Wind. Puerto Rico lots of times. The Odyssey, Shogun, Vanity Fair, and the aforementioned The Glory and the Dream among others (that last one is technically non-fiction but, as a friend of mine once put, it’s not so much history as it is William Manchester’s opinion of history). Paris. The Mosquito Coast. Rome. Rebecca. I’ve left a trail of books like a cigarette smoker leaves cigarette butts on the ground or the wino his discarded bottles wrapped in brown paper bags.

My only defense is that I’ve chosen a socially acceptable vice. Many people think what I’m doing is worthwhile, even laudable, as if my reading a book outranks an illiterate in Cambodia working the fields from dawn to dusk to feed his family. My wife is on to me though. She would rather see me take a nap than read, probably because napping might mean I’m reenergizing myself for productive work around the house. True, I don’t idle my time away in a barroom or play the ponies, but is this much better? When will the day come when I look myself in the mirror and say to myself, “Brother, I got it bad”? When will I stand among my fellow recovering fiction readers and say, “My name is John T. and I haven’t read a paperback in three months”?

Maybe after I finish the book I’m reading.