MODERN TIMES 2: Finding time to read a book
By Dafydd Young
Do you remember those far off days when you had time to read a book, yes a real book printed on paper, and bound between soft or hard covers, depending on your budget or collecting habits?
You might also remember the days when a danger on the road was winter ice, Harry, your 98-year-old neighbor with cataracts, or Paddy, the local drunk who had been having one for the road at O’Toole’s bar for the last six hours.
Things improved with stricter drunk driving laws, MAD (Mothers against Drunk Driving) and more social awareness, and the neighbor finally moved on to the highway in the sky, just before he made 100 when he fatally rammed the local highway patrol, and of course you moved to Panama to avoid the ice.
When you finally realized that cars in Panama don’t come with signal indicator lights, that taxi drivers are color blind at stop lights and you mastered finding your way home along streets with no names, you began to feel safe. And hey, you had survived Montreal, New York, Istanbul or Cairo. But then came the cell phone, and after that the texting gizmo, and your safety level headed back to square one, or worse. Research shows that those who use them when driving actually can’t see a pedestrian or a dog passing in front of them. At least the guy with the cataracts drove his 1930’s Hudson Terraplane at only 5 mph, and O’ Toole’s favorite customer took the back streets at 30.mph to avoid those nasty guys carrying breathalyzers. Less than 30 would have been a signal to the local gendarmerie that Paddy had really gone a bottle too far.
There was a time too when people had pen-pals, letter writing was almost an art form, and before bulk marketing the postman was your favorite caller. That too passed away, and quality was replaced by quantity. People now have “friends” running into the thousands, so when they run into hard times, a dollar or two from each “friend” will carry them through.
However we now have the blessings of email. Great for business, you can reach a client or supplier instantly. The problem is, everyone wants and instant reply, and then there’s the daily or hourly chore of deleting all those uncalled for messages. Letters telling you that a dusky lady in Nigeria wants you to share in the $29 million left by her father or that urgent message from a lawyer in Europe telling you to hop on a plane to Brussels to pick up a check for 10 million Euros, after you have paid him his processing fee.
And in case that’s not enough, a sack load of requests to share youry career background and family details (and get on yet another digitalized mailing list based on your clicking habits) with people you have never met on the likes of hookedin, trappedin , caughtin andfacelift and faceoff. Will they be listed as “friends” or “business colleagues”? Will you get access to more than a listing of their on-line degrees like FBA (Failed BA) and the daily messages: “Got up. Showered. Went shopping. Went to bed. Didn’t dream” With no Oedipal hints, even Freud would be stumped and Traumdeutung might never have been written … or read.
So how to find time to read a book? I was recently checked into hospital, where signs (ignored by visitors) said “no cell phones.” When they finally gave me permission to use my laptop there was no internet connection. In a few days I have savored the joys of voluminous classics that I haven’t visited since University days, and found meanings that eluded me as a young would be writer of the “Great Welsh/Canadian” novel. I worked my way through MiddleMarch, over 700 pages, plus 286 notes and a 22 page intro by an Oxford Don, The Forsyte Saga another 700 odd pages (with great personal memories as I inadvertently helped the female star of the famed TV series get her role as Irene). Neither Eliot nor Galsworthy was the master of the short snappy forgettable sentence. The books were written when big ruled at dinner and in literature.
And now I’m plunging back into arguably Dickens’ best work, Great Expectations. Good timing, because his 200th birthday was celebrated while I lay in ICU with less expectations. All t will be followed by a leavening of modern writers. I am going to have to read fast, before returning to the world of Iphones and pads, laptops, interet and “friends” and whatever the latest “must have” product that is being thought up by those techi whiz kids in Japan, S. Korea and Silicone Valley, all out to ensure that I won’t have time to read.
