Pause: To Read or to Watch

When we read, we re-make ourselves. When we watch video, we do too--somewhat. This is one of the intriguing notions that Sven Birkerts puts forward in his book, TheGutenberg Elegies. He speaks mainly of reading novels, but implies that we do some self re- making in other kinds of reading as well. Mr. Birkerts suggests that the experience one has when reading a novel is as much a product of the reader's life experience as of the novelist's artistry.

The novelist may write, "Jane sees a large lazy cat." When the reader's eyes scan these words, her mind projects cats she has met that fit the description, more or less. She might settle on the image of one large, lazy, long-haired, black-and-white, mean-spirited cat with a bitten-off tail that ran into her as it darted out of an alley. Now, whenever the novelist mentions this cat, the reader sees the torpid tom of her experience--or a cat looking much like the tom.

Expand this notion to all the characters, settings and actions portrayed in the novel, and you'll see why Birkerts claims the novel is really a collaborative work made between writer and reader. The text of the novel evokes a steady stream of images, feelings, sounds and even smells from the reader's own memory. The reader clothes the text with the substance of his or her own experience. In the end, the reader reads personal experiences transformed into other lives, other places, other events. He sees in the novel his own life as someone else might have lived it, or his life as someone else might…