(De)valuing reading

Ever notice how sometimes topics or issues seem to all of a sudden come at you from different venues? Happens to me all the time. I'm convinced it's because I'm clueless to most of the stuff around me and just happen to attend to the things that repeat, but that's beside the point...

What I have been noticing is a recent upsurge in references to reading in the things that cross my desk(top). I've been struggling with the reading/writing dilemma lately. Those of you who've written a dissertation definitely know what I'm talking about, but even if you haven't, you've probably encountered it anytime you've written a research paper. It's that urge to read just one more thing, find one more source, before you feel capable of starting to write.

I've been suspecting that my writing is as fitful as it has been because I have to read more. But retreating to reading as an activity is also a very easy way to avoid dealing with the writing. And since I have a definite, quasi-scheduled deadline (no, that isn't an oxymoron - it's both definite, and only roughly scheduled) for a chapter, there should be some urgency to get the writing done. But I keep finding myself reading other things in an attempt to solve some of the writing speed bumps I'm encountering.

[A related, but non-reading problem that I'm struggling with now is that I read a book review in a journal that arrived this week. The book sounds like it would help me solve one of those problem areas in this chapter. The problem? Neither my school, nor the local university library have the book or are connected to universities with the book (according to Worldcat, only 13 libraries in all of North America have the book). So I'd have to order it. But no North American online bookstores have it (even amazon.co.uk doesn't have it). So I'd have to order it from the Czech republic. With the shipping, the price tag gets a bit high... So I need to decide if that's the price I pay for not being connected to one of the universities that have it]

But back to reading. Through academic blog surfing, I came across this excellent post over at To Delight and to Instruct on the devaluing of reading time as non-productive work. As academics, we value writing (and publication) over reading. The yearly kudos list of grad student accomplishments that our department produces lists only conference papers delivered, articles published, or positions gained. The list coordinator would probably laugh if I wrote in and said my accomplishment for the year was to read 2000 pages of literary criticism, even if 500 of it was French philosophers!

This privileging of writing over reading as academic activity isn't limited to grad students (who are actually the one group whose reading is expected to dominate academic activity). Horace writes that it's hard to think of a reading day as productive. This is because of

the idea of our work being inserted more and more persistently into a capitalist logic wherein everything is measured in terms of its exchange value, where its quantifiability is most tangible and its value is clearest when it can be reproduced, or exchanged for capital

and that grading, the most quantifiable part of teaching, is the least effective pedagogically. Certainly my students don't learn from my grading (any composition teacher can attest to that - more often than not, you get the final draft with the same problem you provided a solution to in the draft... *sigh*). My students learn in the classroom, not through the powerpoints or lecture notes themselves, but through the dynamic interaction of two human beings engaged in exploring a problem together. But that's a different blog post.

The point is that our training into the academy reinforces this idea that writing is productive (because quantifiable) and reading, or worse yet, thinking about things, is non-productive time. We count our productivity by words written, or pages produced (and I've fallen into the most extreme case of this as evidenced by my participation in NaNoWriMo). But the creativity that writing requires can't be reduced to a timetable or a formula. In an article that my students are reading this term "What Business Can Learn from Open Source", Paul Graham notes the same need for "soak" time regarding ideas (in this case, open source software programming):

The...problem with pretend work is that it often looks better than real work. When I'm writing or hacking I spend as much time just thinking as I do actually typing. Half the time I'm sitting drinking a cup of tea, or walking around the neighborhood. This is a critical phase-- this is where ideas come from-- and yet I'd feel guilty doing this in most offices, with everyone else looking busy.

I nodded vigorously when I read this. The couple of years I spent in an office of the 9 to 5 variety were like that. I know there were many times that I felt the guilty start of being caught staring at the wall while I thought through something, when I should've been trying to look busy. It's very stressful trying to look like you're working when what you really need to do is just think... I'm lucky that in my current work as an elearning content manager, adjunct instructor, and dissertation writer, I can spend time staring at the walls, walking (or running) around, while I mull over problems without anyone looking at me like I'm wasting time...!

It doesn't mean that I'm not susceptible to that urge to seem productive though. Even when I'm reading academic sources, I feel like I need to be making notes on what I'm reading. You know, so that I can justify spending the time reading by the fact that I'll at least have these notes if I need them later. It's a tad pathetic. But then again, I feel a certain level of perverse satisfaction as I see the number of entries in Endnote climb (topping 600 at this point, so let's hope they come in handy! actually, they already have, which of course just reinforces that perverse delight in the growing number...) At least with an new Endnote entry, I can point to something quantifiable - see, I was reading, and now I have one more entry...!

Reading is one of those things that you can get in trouble for at work, especially if you're not making notes. Which is why I found this Read at Work website absolutely fabulous! When you go to the site and click to enter, you see a desktop like this one, you know, the generic wallpaper that computers seem to always come with. Then if you select one of the files on the "desktop" it will open to a powerpoint file. I especially like The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde (you'll find it in the short story file). The site takes you from the imitation desktop to one of the literature links that looks like a powerpoint presentation. So you can be reading great literature and anyone looking over your shoulder at work will think you're hard at work on the next powerpoint presentation. As you can see, you don't even need to register to use it. I love it!

Scrolling through some of the selections on the site, I can't help but wonder if students would read these stories in this format because they're chunked into smaller, easily digestible chunks (well, that, and they come with graphics... though some of the images don't necessarily match the content). After all, one of the challenges of online reading is that what works well on paper - paragraphs neatly arranged in a uniform pattern on a page - doesn't work well on the screen. After all, we all remember those early amateur websites that were basically text on a screen (with colored font thrown in - what was it about colored font that those webpage makers were fascinated with? one of those mysteries I never did figure out). It took a while to figure it out, but all the literature now recognizes that reading online is a very different activity than reading on paper, and to be effective, it has to be arranged, organized, and translated to the online format.

Of course all this talk of online reading (okay, all my talk about online reading) gets me wondering what the content of the dissertation would like look converted to web format... Maybe I'll actually have the time this summer to give it a try. At least a website would be more "productive" than just reading...!