On Speed Reading

I’m reading a manuscript right now— the “Swiss cheese draft”, as he likes to call it, of my friend Sunil Yapa’s book. So far I’m loving it. There are things to fix, of course. Every great book, after all, is born out of its holes. Powerful sentences hidden under weaker ones. Maybe a phrase or two that can be firmed up or slimmed down. An idea that could be clarified.

I’ve had it for a while now and I haven’t gotten very far. You see, it takes me a while to read anything. In an hour, I can get through maybe fifteen pages. When I’m reading— especially friends’ manuscripts— my eye tracks back. I test the words, I test the phrases, knock sentences up against the mighty oak of its native paragraph. In short I do the opposite of what this video suggests.

From word to word, I crawl and pore, mouthing every one of them in husky breath. I don’t skim ahead or pick apart the bones or ignore the pauses or otherwise defile the careful rhythms of this book.

Because there are more important things than speed and efficiency. There is sound. There is breath. In every word, every noun and verb and article and part of speech, in every last comma, every last striking punctuation. Every aspirated sound chaining one into the next into the one following, until… my God do I even have to explain?

I do not speed read because my friend, like me, loves words. Worked damned hard in putting them there. He deliberated and sweated and crafted and mulled and don’t you dare skip a one.

Because reading and writing are just different sides of talking. Because that is all we want to do as readers and writers. We want to talk to each other and in so doing glimpse that part of ourselves we wish so much to share.

Admittedly, speed reading is a bit of a straw man especially when there are far greater threats to literacy in the world today but I think it belies a far deeper erosion.  An inclination toward the easy.  Toward the abridged.  The thumbnail sketch.  The plot summary.  The character limit.  A whole species gifted with speech, with mouth parts and throat parts that spin thought into song and instead we’d rather scan and click and ping and tweet.  Soundlessly.

So I read slow and it’s worth it because he’s right.  It’s Swiss cheese. Bold and flavorful and delicious. A feast for the willing.