SLOW
READING: the affirmation of authorial intent[1]
by
Lancelot R. Fletcher
The phase, "slow reading," is taken from
Nietzsche. In paragraph 5 of the preface to Daybreak (Morgenršthe)
he writes:
A
book like this, a problem like this, is in no hurry; we both, I just as much as
my book, are friends of lento. It is not for nothing that I have been a
philologist, perhaps I am a philologist still, that is to say, A TEACHER OF
SLOW READING:- in the end I also write slowly. Nowadays it is not only my
habit, it is also to my taste - a malicious taste, perhaps? - no longer to
write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is 'in a
hurry'. For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one
thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow -
it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the WORD which has nothing but
delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it
lento. But precisely for this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by
precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an
age of 'work', that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste,
which wants to 'get everything done' at once, including every old or new book:-
this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read WELL, that is
to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with
reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers...My patient
friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and philologists:
LEARN to read me well![2]
"I AM A TEACHER OF SLOW READING." So says
Nietzsche. When I started my teaching career (in the 1960s) I tried saying the
same thing in the first class of every course I taught: ÒGood morning,Ó I would
say. ÒMy name is Lancelot Fletcher. I am a teacher of slow reading,Ó at which
point all the students would laugh. Why? Because they thought they already knew
how to read slowly. In those days in the US many people used to pay considerable
sums of money to teachers who promised to teach them Òspeed reading.Ó Students
and businessmen alike were desperate to improve their reading speed because
they had too much written material to read and not enough time to read it all
at their normal reading speed – which they all felt was much too slow for
their purposes. So the idea of taking a course from a teacher of slow reading
struck them as utterly ridiculous. As far as they were concerned reading slowly
was a problem, a sign of their inadequacy in the field of reading. Why would
they want to study how to walk (slowly) when what they needed to do was to run
– as fast as possible?
After the laughter subsided I would tell my students that
what I meant by saying this was: ÒThis is the nature of philosophy. For me
philosophy IS the teaching of slow reading.Ó This didnÕt help very much, but it
was strange enough so the students didnÕt laugh and some of them began to pay
attention. In one class the cleverest student said, ÒOk, I will accept that,
even though I donÕt know what you mean. IÕm ready. So letÕs begin slow
reading.Ó
And I answered, ÒBut thatÕs just the problem. You canÕt
begin.Ó ÒWhat do you mean?Ó he asked, beginning to sound rather exasperated.
ÒIf you canÕt begin slow reading, how can anybody learn it, and how can you
honestly say that you teach slow reading?Ó
ÒThe problem is you are thinking that to begin slow reading
means to pick up a text and read it in a certain way, different from how you
have been reading before, but thatÕs not the way it works. Slow reading doesnÕt
start with reading. When slow reading begins, you are already reading. You have
been reading for a long time. Slow reading starts, not with reading but with
slowing. But even that is not quite right. It would be more accurate to say
that slow reading starts with stopping, with turning around. In our reading
habits we are like drivers who have been speeding down the highway, intent on
reaching our destination, when we begin to notice that things along the side of
the road donÕt look quite the way we expected. At some point we begin to think
that we might have misinterpreted a road sign that we passed a few kilometers
back, and then suddenly the thought strikes us that we have been driving
rapidly in the wrong direction! Now, as you turn your car around and start
driving back to take another look at that sign, now you may find yourself in
the slow reading frame of mind.Ó
If one could begin slow reading the first lesson would
be: Just be present to the words
on the page. Allow the words to simply BE there, and take note of the fact that
they ARE there – BEFORE YOU DECIDE WHAT THEY MEAN.
If you are like most of my students you will again feel
tempted to find this ridiculous and dismiss it with a wave of your hand. ÒDoes
this guy think he is some kind of Zen master? What does he mean by telling me
that I should learn to ÔAllow the words to simply be there?Õ I mean, the words
are what they are! They can be what they are without any permission from me, so
I donÕt need to allow them to be there, and I certainly donÕt need to learn how
to do this!Ó
And, of course, for the students who respond in this way,
which is to say most students, this is a very hard lesson, because it asks them
to do something that they are completely unaccustomed to doing, and even the
request they experience as an insult. If you doubt this, make the following
test: Read a sentence of eight or ten words to a group of students – or
to any group of people you choose -- and ask them to reproduce the sentence
word for word. What happens? Do they repeat the words that you spoke? In my
experience that almost never happens. Instead almost everybody responds by
telling you what they thought the sentence meant – but in different
words.
Why does this happen? I think it is because we are utterly
preoccupied with deciding what the sentences we read and hear MEAN to us. Even
more than that, we are preoccupied with deciding whether WE agree or disagree
with what we take the sentences to mean, whether WE approve or disapprove. And,
because we are so preoccupied. we generally do not pause to take note of what
the sentences we read actually SAY. This rush to interpretation and judgment is
strongly encouraged by most of our educational practices.
Perhaps we need to consider how we originally began to read.
Nowadays most of us have learned to suppress vocalization as we read. We are
taught that it is bad form to read aloud unless we are intending to share what
we are reading with someone else who is willing to listen. And some of us can
even read without moving our lips. But I am willing to bet that, for each one
of us, when we first learned how to read, reading meant reading aloud -- that
is, speaking, reproducing, the words exactly as they are on the page. In your
first moments of reading, when you were just learning to read, being a reader
meant that you were an actor. To read you had to speak; you had to become the
voice of the author. So that is where we begin.
The intention of the teaching of slow reading (which, as I
said, is what I understand philosophy to be) is to subvert the customary mode
of reading. Its intention is to afford students (i.e. those who make us the
gift of their listening) some critical access to their own interpretive
activity. The purpose is not to leave students with the notion that the
text means whatever they wish to make it mean. That is pretty much the
customary mode of reading that the teaching of slow reading wishes to subvert.
These days students will do that pretty well on their own without any teaching
from us. But to subvert this mode of reading we do first need to make students
aware of what they are doing, aware of the fact that they are in the habit of
imposing their own meanings on the text.
But some people might say that that is the only thing we can
do. What alternative is there to imposing our own meanings or interpretations
on the text? To answer that question it is useful to step out away from the
literary context for a moment and think about an ordinary conversation. As an
example let me relate a conversation I recall from my childhood, when I was
about fourteen. My best friend had a younger sister named Fay who was about
seven at the time of this conversation. Fay had the misfortune to be blind, but
she was also a musical prodigy and had perfect pitch. One day I was visiting my
friend and her sister was playing the piano as she often did when suddenly Fay
stopped playing music and started simply banging her fists on the keyboard,
making horrible, loud crashing sounds. Then she screamed, ÒThis piano is so out
of tune I canÕt play it anymore!Ó To which her mother responded, ÒFay, whatÕs
the matter? Are you hungry, do you want me to fix you some food?Ó And Fay then
screamed even louder, ÒNO! I donÕt want any food, I just want you to get the
piano tuned!Ó
What happened in this little domestic drama? FayÕs mother,
being the sort of mother who lived in the kitchen and tended to understand many
things in terms of food, brought her Òkitchen listeningÓ to her daughterÕs
exclamation and, being full of motherly concern for her daughterÕs wellbeing
she responded to her daughterÕs cry for help with an offer of the kind of help
she was most capable of providing, To that extent FayÕs mother was like one of
our usual modern (or postmodern) students in imposing her own meaning on her
daughterÕs ÒtextÓ. Fortunately, FayÕs mother then did something that our
students rarely do: she asked the ÒauthorÓ if her interpretation was correct,
and the author emphatically set her straight.
To say it once more, the teaching of slow reading is
intended to give students some critical access to their own interpretive
activity – their own habit of manufacturing meanings. However, this is
not the end of slow reading. It is only the beginning. For the discovery of our
own interpretive habits is the necessary precondition for gaining access to
authorial intent. In ordinary life we become aware of and sometimes correct our
interpretations of the speeches we listen to by having conversations with the
authors of those speeches. The purpose of the teaching of slow reading is to
allow us to enter into conversations with the authors of great works -- those
authors whose distinction is that they afford us the opportunity to think
things that are worthy of thought.
But how can you enter into a conversation with an author who
is dead or otherwise not available? I will offer a suggestion in a moment, but
first let me pose a question: Do the principles of interpretation critically
depend on whether or not the author is available to answer your questions? If
you are reading a book by a living author to whom you could presumably send
email and then, when you are half way through the book you learn that the
author has suddenly died, does this fact cause you to suddenly change your way
of interpreting the book? Do you say, ÒOh, good! He is dead so now I can make
his words mean whatever I want because he is not around to tell me that I am
wrong?Ó
Now let me say how I approach this issue in my own teaching.
When I am beginning to teach a course on one of the important texts in
philosophy, say Plato's Republic, after saying that I am a teacher of slow
reading I say, "As you read this book, I want you to assume that it was
written by God." This often causes a certain amount of consternation and
incipient revolt (more in the US than in Georgia). Most of the students
suddenly feel that I am trying to dominate and control their minds. They ask,
"You mean we have to accept what this guy says, even if we don't agree?
Even if we think he is wrong?"
"Not at all," I reply. "The purpose of asking
you to assume that the text for the course is written by God is to give you the
opportunity to learn."
"How so?"
"Well, if you are going to learn, and you are going to
learn from the author of this text, then I suppose there must be something you
have to learn from that author. Right?"
"I suppose so."
"And what you have to learn from the author, in this
case Plato, must then be something about which you know less than Plato. It
might even be something about which you have incorrect opinions or assumptions.
Do you agree?"
"Yes."
"Now, when you read a passage in a book and you find
the passage unclear or inconsistent with what you already think, do you
immediately say to yourself, "Here is an opportunity for me to
learn?"
"Well, not always."
"'Not at all,' would be more like it! What most of us
do is to say, 'That guy was confused. He is just making fallacious arguments.'
Of course, in the abstract, especially when we are being polite, we say we
'know' that knowledge is supremely desirable. Somebody who took us seriously
might suppose, therefore, that when the opportunity to acquire knowledge and
get rid of some portion of our ignorance presented itself we would immediately
jump at it, as if it were some particularly delicious food which we have long
craved. But, in fact, that is not what usually happens, is it? In most cases,
when the opportunity to learn is seen close up it looks distinctly
unattractive. It is bad news. The reason it is bad news is that the opportunity
to learn is always accompanied by the realization that we have hitherto been
ignorant and mistaken. Naturally enough, we tend to avoid such discomfort by
seeking to shift the blame. 'It's not my fault!' we cry, 'It's the author who
is mistaken.' That, then, points us to the purpose of assuming that the author
of our text is God, i.e. a being whose intention may be obscure, but who does
not make mistakes. If we adopt the working hypothesis that the author of our
text is God, and if we act on that hypothesis when we come to something that
appears strange, confusing or wrong, attributing this to errors or ignorance of
the author is not an available strategy, so we are driven to look first at the
possibility that the confusion reflects our own ignorance."
And then a student will say, "But what if the author
really IS mistaken? I mean, we can pretend that Plato's dialogues were written
by God, but we all know that that isn't really so, and besides I don't even
believe in the existence of God. So, by accepting your hypothesis, don't we run
the risk of deceiving ourselves and never finding out the truth?"
I answer, "Did I ask you to believe anything? To accept
anything in the text as true? Not at all. I am not asking you to believe
anything the author says. I am asking you to try to think what the author
thinks. We are concerned with what we should do when a passage in the text
occurs for us as questionable, and I am suggesting that, by supposing the
author to be God, the perplexity that occurs for us in the text becomes an
occasion for self-examination, an occasion for the discovery of our own
ignorance. Yes, I suppose that, at the end of the day, after we have finished
our slow reading, I might have to agree that the author of the text was
probably a human being capable of making mistakes, not a god. But if we start
out operating on the assumption that the text was written by God, by the time
we reach the point where we need to consider the author's mistakes, we will
have reached a thorough understanding of the questions which the author meant
to ask. If we refuse to assume the author's divinity even provisionally, we may
never get so far. And perhaps that -- the knowledge of the questions -- is the
real object of philosophical inquiry."
In some parts of the academic world the idea of authorial
intent has become an object of contempt. We are sometimes told that, since the
meaning of the author cannot be known with certainty (especially in the case of
dead authors) we should interpret texts based on our own ideas, without even
considering what the author meant. The absurdity of such a practice becomes
very clear as soon as you imagine it in the context of ordinary conversation: A
person says something, say X. You respond by saying, ÒThat means ÉY.Ó The first
speaker responds, ÒNo, thatÕs not what I meant at all.Ó And you say, ÒI donÕt
care what you have to say now. I know that what you meant was Y, and thatÕs the
end of it.Ó In short, the denial of respect for authorial intent entails a
contempt for authors which ends by sanctioning in students a contempt for
speakers that ultimately leads to a complete breakdown of effective
communication.
The teaching of slow reading, therefore, is an experiment
that aims beyond itself. In itself the practice of slow reading intends to
create occasions for joining in conversations with (not just about) some of the
most powerful thinkers who have ever lived -- not merely to learn what they
thought, but to think with them and learn from them. But the aim of slow
reading beyond itself is to consider whether the practice of slow reading might
foster the recovery of a certain art of conversation: that in which listening
holds at least an equal place with speaking.
The practice of slow reading avoids debates about the status
of authorial intent in hermeneutic theory. Instead, the practice of slow reading aims at a practical
demonstration of the power of respect for authorial intent and, through that, a
demonstration of the power of respect for authors, whether they are alive or
dead, whether their authorship is expressed in writing or in speaking. The
practice of slow reading explores the possibility that a respectful reading of
books that are thoughtfully written, whatever their age, is an exceptionally
powerful means for generating new ideas relevant to the issues of the present
day. And we hope to find that reading with respect for the intent of the
authors of our study texts also tends to generate conversations in which we are
attentive and respectful toward one another.