and the hours after that

“[The] bookish, readerly community, extending through time and across space, has still a substantial membership; nonreaders outnumber us—always have and always will—but we can always find one another and are always eager to welcome others into the fold. May our tribe increase.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“About seven hundred years ago Richard de Bury—an English monk, librarian, book collector, and eventually Bishop of Durham—wrote that ‘in books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come forth the laws of peace. All things are corrupted and decay in time; Saturn ceases not to devour the children that he generates; all the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.’ An effusive encomium to the joys and benefits of reading, yes, but not too effusive. Richard’s bookish, readerly community, extending through time and across space, has still a substantial membership; nonreaders outnumber us—always have and always will—but we can always find one another and are always eager to welcome others into the fold. May our tribe increase.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“To pick up a book—to decide to read something, almost anything—is to choose a particular form of attention. That choice creates simultaneously silence and receptiveness to a voice; the reader acts imaginatively, constructing meaning from the experience of finding words on a page, but also, ideally, strives to assume a posture of charity toward what he or she reads. This choosing reader is never merely passive, never simply a consumer, but constantly engages in critical judgment, sometimes withholding sympathy with a thoughtful wariness, and then, in the most blessed moments, when trust has been earned, giving that sympathy wholly and without stint.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“That so many of us conquer our fears of being cut off and embrace this solitude [of reading by ourselves]—this solitude that is also a connection—suggests that the rewards of reading can be considerable indeed.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“[W]e may be tempted to use books and other texts as ways of confirming our self-images, but the temptation can be resisted.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“In Proust and the Squid, Maryann Wolf notes that for many children the act of being read to—and therefore the book itself—is powerfully associated with being loved.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“[I]f I know what I am looking for, I do not therefore know what I need.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“I used to try to determine in advance what books I would read over the summer, but eventually realized that to put any book on such a list nearly guaranteed that I would not read it. No matter how anxiously I had been anticipating it, as soon as it took its place among the other assigned texts it became as broccoli unto me—and any book not on the list, no matter how unattractive it might appear in other contexts, immediately became as desirable as a hot fudge sundae. And over the years I have decided that this instinctive resistance to the predetermined is a gift, not a disability.

The cultivation of serendipity is an option for anyone, but for people living in conditions of prosperity and security and informational richness it is something vital. To practice ‘accidental sagacity’ is to recognize that I don’t really know where I am going, even if I like to think I do, or think Google does; that if I know what I am looking for, I do not therefore know what I need; that I am not master of my destiny and captain of my fate; that it is probably a very good thing that I am not master of my destiny and captain of my fate. An accidental sagacity may be the form of wisdom I most need, but am least likely to find without eager pursuit. Moreover, serendipity is the near relation of Whim; each stands against the Plan.

Plan once appealed to me, but I have grown to be a natural worshiper of Serendipity and Whim; I can try to serve other gods, but my heart is never in it. I truly think I would rather read an indifferent book on a lark than a fine one according to schedule and plan. And why not? After all, once upon a time we chose none of our reading: it all came to us unbidden, unanticipated, unknown, and from the hand of someone who loved us.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“We must consent to be guided by the invisible hand of serendipity.

The word was coined by that curious man Sir Horace Walpole, known today (if at all) as one of the founders of the ‘Gothic’ tale of suspense and terror, but more famous in his own time as an especially elegant and proficient writer of letters. In a 1754 letter to a friend he describes his discovery of some curious Venetian coat of arms and pauses to say that ‘this discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity.’ And then he explains this ‘very expressive word’ of his own invention: ‘I once read a silly fairy tale, called “The Three Princes of Serendip”’—Serendip being an old name for Sri Lanka: ‘as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of… (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for comes under this description).’ The finding of what one is not looking for will be the element of the letter most obviously relevant to what I’ve been saying so far; but equally important is the phrase ‘by accidents and sagacity,’ or, as Walpole puts it later in the same letter, ‘accidental sagacity.’

Fortuity happens, but serendipity can be cultivated. You can grow in serendipity. You can even become a disciple of serendipity. In the literature of the Middle Ages, we see reverence for the goddess Fortuna—fortune, chance—and to worship her is a religious way of shrugging: an admission of helplessness, an acknowledgment of all that lies beyond our powers of control. But in the very idea of serendipity is a kind of hope, even an expectation, that we can turn the accidents of fortune to good account, and make of them some knowledge that would have been inaccessible to us if we had done no more than find what we were looking for. Indeed, it may be possible not only to cultivate the sagacity but also the accidents. It may be possible, and desirable, to actively put yourself in the way of events beyond your control.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“Encounters with other readers can be a vital source of improvements in our judgments, particularly, I think, in teaching us not to be too quickly dismissive: when we hear that others who have been more charitably disposed to a book have gotten something out of it that we missed, we may well be moved to be more charitable ourselves in the future.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“Reading… is, or should be, a moving between the solitary encounter and something more social. Even when the ‘more social’ thing is just an entry in a private diary, it constitutes a step away from the silent absorption in a text, an attempt to account for and therefore make one’s response more intersubjective, that is, connected to, interacting with, the experiences of others. To write a letter to a friend, or participate in an online debate, or join a book group, are all ways of seeking this social dimension of reading, which almost everyone needs to some degree.

But I think I have to insist that these various ways of reading with others are not reading proper, but rather accompaniments to reading. They cannot substitute for the solitary encounter. (Even when we read comments on blog posts, we usually do so silently, and if we’re really interested in what the person is saying, we won’t want to be interrupted as we read.) These accompaniments change the reading experience in multiple ways: they can force us to reevaluate what we have read, and they can alter our orientation to a text when we go back into our cone of silence. Encounters with other readers can be a vital source of improvements in our judgments, particularly, I think, in teaching us not to be too quickly dismissive: when we hear that others who have been more charitably disposed to a book have gotten something out of it that we missed, we may well be moved to be more charitable ourselves in the future.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“As far as common sense can tell, every good idea ever achieved is the product of both connection and contemplation, of moving back and forth between the two. Every great thinker has been aware of the work of his or her predecessors and highly responsive to them, and has usually had colleagues as well; and every great thinker has had to retire into solitude, often, in order to think really hard and without interruption.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“[R]eading a book is dialogically asymmetrical: you learn about the book, about its characters and perhaps its author, but none of them learns anything about you. I’m not convinced that this is necessarily regrettable: many of us should probably spend more time just listening, rather than insisting on being heard.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“If you could get a book to answer your questions, surely it would often say, ‘Be patient, I’m getting to that.’”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“The idea addressed with precision is more powerful and more meaningful than the idea shot carelessly into… space.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction