SCREEN-BASED READING AND PAPER-BASED READING: WHICH ONE IS BEST?
Accumulation, contemplation, and reading
In the last few years, I’ve often found myself having conflicting feelings about electronic books. When I first bought an e-book reader in 2013, I thought it might help me organize space more efficiently at home, and make room for many more paper books on the shelves (and of course carry even more books with me while travelling, all stored in one small device), or perhaps just have more empty space for myself to dwell in and enjoy things like meditation, contemplation, dancing and work out exercises.
Today, the accelerating pace of existence getting higher by the minute has turned the opting for electronic books into a basic need rather than an existential choice: accumulation of objects bought on the spur of the moment has led to a growing popularity of electronic books over paper ones for mere want of space, time, and attention. This in turn has divested virtual books of their presence: most of the times, it feels like they are not even there – not for real – because you can neither see them nor touch them. Personally, I don’t even remember having thousands of volumes (let alone which ones) in my e-book reader, because they are piling up exactly like paper ones would do, with one crucial difference: you can’t see them literally piling up, so you end up forgetting that they are indeed getting far too many for you to read in your lifetime.
When it comes to books, I’ve realized that for me “virtual” amounts to “ephemeral”, and ultimately to “non-existent”. Even the act of reading itself constitutes something volatile and provisional, because there’s no tangible proof of that book’s existence, so I may start reading it, then skip to another volume without even realising I have reversed the action of reading into one of subconscious erasure. Like a computer file, my brain seems to rewrite itself, deleting the part concerning the act of reading that specific book and starting it all over again – with a change of volume and title.
This got me thinking: what might seem to be a need to rationalize space at home may actually be something else altogether: buying and storing more and more virtual books on an electronic device is nothing but a compulsion, stemming from the drive to accumulate typical of capitalism. The fact that platform owners are the ones who accumulate capital, while we “users” (a really awful definition, because it reduces people to puppets who use, thus potentially use up, some resource) accumulate objects, does not change the capitalist nature of this compulsion. Weren’t free-time activities supposed to liberate us from the joke of automated, performative actions? And what is the accumulation of choose-click-buy-own but a sequence of automated acts which we perform not only without thinking, but also without wishing to enjoy the book we’ve bought to the fullest (sometimes not even enjoying it at all), because reading is no longer the point of all this – the non-stop repetition of the cycle is? The age of disposable commodities has turned reading into yet another disposable and meaningless activity: you read, skip, then stop reading altogether and move on to another book without even feeling any ethical responsibility for not finishing.
The acronym DNF – Did Not Finish – has even made it into an acceptable, and universally accepted, description to be included in a book’s rating or review; it may not be an official taxonomic element of the rating system itself, but you are allowed to include it in your personal assessment, because you know that everybody will immediately understand what you are referring to.
I think the proliferation of screen-based reading and e-readers has only resulted in our time and energy being used (up) at a higher speed. You may think you are relaxing yourself, and trying to understand an author’s ideas on style, content, and the world, but you are just being a cog in the capitalist machine, feeding it with your own personal contribution to the accumulation drive.
Can reading a paper book become an act of resistance to capital accumulation, I wonder, an act of contemplation and also a way to employ our time and energy without exhausting them or reducing them to mere compulsion? It could, and then again it couldn’t. It depends on how we approach reading itself. I tend to read up to ten books simultaneously, mixing paper and electronic ones. I’ve noticed that while the former engage my undevoted attention, the latter tend to be erased from my consciousness, as if they were no longer part of the set list of titles I’m currently reading. Suddenly, they become irrelevant, and thus redudant. My brain eliminates them quite easily, when confronted with the idea of having a “real” book before my eyes – a book I can touch with my hands, and smell with my nose. Presence ends up winning over absence once again.
Then – it happened by chance, because I didn’t mean it to happen – I made an experiment: I bought the electronic version of a book and read it from start to finish. I liked it so much that I finally decided I wanted to have the paper version too, so as to go back to the parts I enjoyed the most and perhaps re-live the same experience twice, savouring the language, underlining words and taking proper notes (I don’t know about you, but I find taking notes on e-readers quite annoying). Much to my surprise, I discovered the memory stored in my brain was fallacious at best: either those brilliant parts weren’t there, or they meant something else entirely. It felt like reading a different book. I was of course disappointed at the discovery, and wondered if using an e-book reader may tamper with the ability of the brain to retain information as well as to enjoy and savour the beauty of the language created by an author, and the overall meaning of a book. Although I haven’t stopped using e-readers, I no longer trust my memory when reading the electronic version of a book, and if I can, and the book is worth the effort, I buy the paper version to dive deeper into the book and its hidden layers, something I just can’t do on an e-reader. There are also some books in particular which I think are impossible or may prove difficult to read in e-format. Take poetry collections: how can you tell whether a blank space is meant to be deliberate or not? How can you follow the pacing of a line lacing onto the next one, until they weave into a full tapestry of sounds and meanings? What about James Joyce, or Dostoevskij? Can you embrace and fully comprehend their complexity in electronic format? Most of all, why should I be constantly reminded how much time I have left for reading that book (according to whose standards, by the way)? What if I didn’t want to know? And why do they assume we want to know anyway? Because “time is money”, even when you are doing something you enjoy, without any salary and/or exploitation involved?
So, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that it’s better for me to opt for paper books whenever I can, because my brain and imagination will be involved in a more thorough, imaginative and empathetic way. Why empathetic, you might wonder. I think it comes from the idea that a book is an entity you keep in your hands, so as to hold it – like a person, an animal, or a tree. And as you hold it, you keep it close to your heart-mind. It requires your attentive listening to its words and messages. You cannot do anything else but pay attention to what it has to say – quite the opposite of what capitalism wants us to do with our free time: accumulating and consuming without end, and without thinking. Instead, you stop to listen, then understand what it is to care and think, and in the end you stop again to perhaps elaborate your own interpretation of what the book had to say, hopefully seeing the world in a more humane and open way, without any judgement.
I believe we can only grasp the meaning of an object if we keep that object in our hands and visually see it before you, visibility being the evidence of its existence. By seeing it, and holding it, we can breathe alongside a book, its pages talking to us as we turn them, physically holding them in our hands. Electronic tools may well be a practical and convenient invention, but they don’t seem to stimulate our imagination the same way printed books do. Wouldn’t you agree?