Review: Rights of the Reader

Daniel Pennac's Rights of the Reader was recommended to me in part because I’ve been dissatisfied with the pace of my reading for some time. I found it an interesting exploration of why young people in particular may be alienated from reading and how they might be wooed back:

You can't make someone read. Just as you can't make them fall in love or dream. . . .
You can try of course. "Go on, love me!" "Dream!" "Read! Read! Read, goddamit I'm telling you to read!" 'Go to your room and read!"
What happens next?
Nothing

So, I'm the sort of weirdo that was not at all alienated by how we typically do English classes. I did sometimes run behind: I embarrassingly faked my way through To Kill a Mockingbird, not because I was blocked directly; I'd just fallen behind and lost track of the assignment.

But one of my fondest memories of English classes, I believe 9th grade, was to write a more critical book review. I'd initially suggested a Xanth book and my teacher, kindly but wisely, suggested I could find something more demanding. I went with the adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Film adaptation novels are hardly the highlight of sci fi canon but it was still a good moment for looking at some pulp more critically.

But while I don't even recall my line of argument in my essay, I remember my excitement at discovering compilations of critical reviews. People deeply engaging with texts, over thinking in their way, but in polished form.

Pennac’s focus is elsewhere. He convincingly argues that we should be reading aloud more when cultivating a love a reading. He argues said love can be lost when going from reading to kids to "and now you can read on your own, get on with it." He tells stories of engaging the words rather than making it an analytical assignment. He quotes Flannery O'Connor:

If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction.

I feel like the book is missing a typology of different and not mutually exclusive reasons people enjoy reading, though I think the book does well to focus on those most alienated, even if this limits the degree it speaks to my own reading rather than that of younger people I hope to encourage.

After the cut, I’ll cover his 10 rights and how I’d modify them for what I want for myself.

1. The right not to read: read by desire, not duty.
2. The right to skip: esp. for kids better to skip plotlines and passages not of interest than to have another abridge.
3. The right not to finish a book: very explicitly including just not getting a challenging book.
4. The right to read it again: again, emphasis on those hard books you put down earlier.
5. The right to read anything: given time and experience good books will find their place a reader’s life.
6. The right to mistake a book for real life: mostly about indulging adolescent over identification as part of becoming a reader.
7. The right to read anywhere: perhaps the one I've most exercised and been chided about over the years. Freedom!
8. The right to dip in: if you can't afford a weekend in Venice, why deny yourself 5 minutes?
9. The right to read aloud: very much tied to appreciating the lyricism of books and an opportunity to more fully engage.
10. The right to be quiet: no mandatory quizzes after books; it’s okay not to have something to say.

So I respect his list, but in picking out rights for myself, I am taking advantage of an opportunity to get my groove back while on leave. [Right] 1 and 10 I don’t care to exercise and rights 4 and 8 I don’t feel inhibited about. [Right 6 seems a bit niche for adults]. So these are my substitutes:

[4]) The right to read while awake: I had allowed my reading to slip later into the night and had been poorly managing my sleep cycle so reading became an often failing exercise of will power.

[6]) The right to read in a satisfying chunk: Too often I’d get a few pages in before bed or otherwise be stuck with an arbitrary stop point. That under cuts both the start and end of reading and taxes the memory. Complete chapters or even subsections are far more satisfying.

8) The right to be out of touch: One’s phone or computer need not be in reach while reading. Distance from the products of the attention engineers is not too much to ask.

10) The right to obvious observations: It's not a failed engagement if you don't have any novel insights to share. I love talking about books, but it’s silly to feel guilty when one’s strongest impression is straightforward. Be brief, to be sure, but even exchanging obvious reads may add to one another’s understandings of the book and each other.

[Update: Realized I need the right not to read after all. Also some copy-editing courtesy my spouse.]