Are you a resolute reader?

Ever since I posted the last entry, I’ve been receiving emails with questions about serious conversation. Let me try to explain how the concept grows out of the difficulties faced by determined, resolute readers.

The dilemma of the resolute reader

I am a reader. Always have been, as far back as my memories go.

Even before I could read, I loved books—their feel, their smell, their typefaces, their bindings.

I joined the faculty at a small college devoted to reading and studying the greatest books ever written so I could spend most of my time with books.

Over the years, I’ve met thousands of people who share the thirst for reading.

What is it that drives us? Is it a desire for knowledge? For information? For entertainment? For self-improvement? For advice?

We may be looking for any of these things at various times.

But I believe the desire that keeps us poring over books is something deeper, more profound, closer to our hearts. It’s a longing for wisdom.

Real readers—dyed-in-the-wool, inveterate bookworms who are attracted to the most demanding books—are seeking wisdom.

We open a book hoping that somewhere in its pages the author may have dropped a nugget of wisdom, a chunk of insight so hard that the passage of time cannot erode it.

As I see it, a reader is a seeker.

You know who you are. You probably enjoyed school more than any of your friends or acquaintances because there you could read and discuss books. You probably stayed in school as long as you could. Maybe you even became an academic.

But when you started working for a living you discovered that the world isn’t much interested in the search for wisdom that animates genuine readers.

You discovered that most members of your own family, as much as they love you, aren’t interested in the matters you want to discuss. And even if they are, the pressures of life usually interfere with such discussions.

Nearly all the serious readers I know have the same complaint: they hardly know even one other serious reader they can talk to. This makes their reading solitary. What is worse, it hinders the search for wisdom.

Why? Because what we are likely to get out of a book is determined by what attracts our attention. And our attention is conditioned by our personal experiences, our predilections, and our prejudices.

When we read profound books alone, we probably miss most of what is there to see. “Reading alone,” I once heard someone say, “is as bad as drinking alone.”

And this unsatisfying situation not only harms readers, it harms society as well. Society’s lack of interest in the search for wisdom sidelines the very people who are most eager to dive deeply into the nature of things, who are most inclined to discover hidden connections and underlying truths. How many groundbreaking discoveries never happened because society’s seekers don’t have the time to read seriously and contemplate deeply?

No one is winning here. Readers can’t fulfill their desire to seek out wisdom. And society cannot benefit from the insights that successful readers might contribute.

A world made for readers

In my experience, the most helpful thing for serious readers who want to get the most out of their reading is—serious conversation.

By serious conversation I don’t mean ponderous, humorless conversation among effete intellectuals and self-important poseurs.

I mean sustained, lively dialogue about a single book among several readers dedicated to searching for wisdom.

This kind of dialogue overcomes the limitations of solitary reading while retaining all of its value.

In serious conversation, we can share the personal concerns that arise during solitary reading. And we can get help from others. And, even more important, we can discover new ideas that would never have occurred to us on our own.

Serious conversation turbocharges reading. It multiplies our efforts.

If the world were made for readers, opportunities for serious conversation would be everywhere. In the world as it is, they are hardly anywhere.

You have probably joined book clubs and attended book conferences. But their penchant for novelty, popularity, and faddishness make them too superficial for dedicated seekers. You may have tried academic courses or their technological spin-offs, internet courses. Good ones can be very interesting.

But they are all based on the lecture model of information transfer: the teacher has the knowledge and tries to impart to learners by talking at an audience.

I→YOU teaching is not serious conversation. Many things can be learned in this way, but wisdom is not one of them. The search for wisdom requires active participation in reading and conversing, repeated engagement with the same issues, and assistance from like-minded seekers.

Modernity does not support this kind of interaction.

Modernity loves gigantic scale. But the scale of serious conversation has to be small. Somewhere between twelve and eighteen participants is the best size for serious conversation if everyone is to be heard equally.

Modernity loves speed. But serious conversation proceeds slowly. The nuggets don’t reveal themselves quickly.

Modernity loves debate. But serious conversation requires cooperative contributions from all participants.

Modernity loves efficiency. But serious conversation relies on serendipity, indirectness, and unforeseen developments to generate new connections.

All this explains why it is so hard to find serious conversation in the world around us. The modern world is just not suited to serious readers.

I think it’s long past time that we dedicated readers shaped our own reader’s world.

What do you think?

If all this resonates with you, if serious reading is your passion, and if you want to get the most out of the greatest books ever written, what do you think we should do to create a reader’s world that will support our search for wisdom?

I would appreciate hearing your thoughts, because I think we need a reader’s world—and now, before people like us become an endangered species.