Odyssey

It seems unfair that the time it takes to read something has no relation to the time it takes to write it. It is undoubtedly more common to write less than a page a day than it is to read only a page a day. (‘I have been working hard on it all day,’ said  Joyce. ‘Does that mean that you have written a great deal?’ I said. ‘Two sentences,’ said Joyce.) On the other hand, even works that take years to compose may have been conceived in a matter of seconds. (‘No,’ said Joyce. ‘I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.’) As an act of responsible transparency between author and reader books of fiction could not only be labelled ‘A Novel’ but more along the lines of ‘ A Novel: conceived in three minutes and written in 14 years.’ So that the conscientious reader could adjust the speed of reading accordingly.

But who, today, would have time to read as slowly as something has been written? Or, indeed, to read as quickly as some works have been written? In academic circles slow reading is often seen as a virtue: an act of resistance to the acceleration of information exchange. A luxury. But if slow reading is resistance to how language is being used and abused through modern media, slow reading also responds to a resistance within the text. And it is possible that, given the endlessly growing pile of the written to be read, the aim to read as fast as possible is admirable. More precisely: reading as fast as possible until encountering texts that resist this speed, that slow you down, that make you pause. The speed of reading would then be determined by the resistance offered by the text, which would stand in a direct relation to the worthwhileness of reading it.