"But first, for pleasure" - or, "Plato at sunrise, at sea" - or "Why do we read?"

 Reading (1919), Nicolae Vermont

Why do we read?

There are all kinds of reasons. To improve our minds, to educate ourselves, to become familiar with our culture’s literary tradition and inheritance. Maybe it’s to be able to say, “Oh, [insert famous author here]. Yes, I love their work,” and to have all kinds of fashionable literary discussions. Maybe it’s for sheer distraction and entertainment. For some of us, we read because we must. To spin a famous quote from Flaubert, we read to live. We have to read. It is like air to our soul’s lungs. If all of our books and stories were taken away, something inside us would shrivel and starve.

This week in my own reading (following the Bradbury reading plan), I came across a quote that refreshed my perspective on the question “why do I read?”

The [Socratic] dialogues need no introduction; they are ready to be read.
And for what reason, Socrates would say? For pleasure? To say we have read them? To do us good? The answer, surely, is for all three reasons; but first, for pleasure.
A young man who escaped scholarly boredom with the masterpieces of literature by going to sea is now reading them as they should be read, for fun. He discovered Plato with delight, and writes of that discovery:
'My best time for reading is to get up at sunrise, when I can be alone. Then I can read on deck.'
Plato at sunrise, at sea--that surely is the way he should be read. Light in the east, cool morning air with a tang of Attic salt in it, and no distractions to mar the miracle of the world's waking - there are the ideal conditions.
And yet, if we read the same pages at midnight by a warm fireside we must find in them something of that same clear morning light."

Willson Whitman, Introduction to The Best Known Works of Plato (emphasis mine)

When I read that, it was a bit like a splash of cool water in the face. I was charmed and a little challenged. To be able to say, “I’m reading Plato for fun, and thoroughly enjoying it” – my word, who would dare to say that? I would be afraid of sounding pretentious and snooty. Yet, here it is, plain as day. This young man, “who escaped scholarly boredom with the masterpieces of literature,” found that if those masterpieces are read for pleasure, for delight, they are delightful.

Lewis knew this, of course. What didn’t he know when it came to reading? Was there any more cheerful, sincere, honest reader than St. Jack?
In the essay, “Christianity and Culture,” he writes:

I agree … that our leisure, even our play, is a matter of serious concern. … [However,] to do them at all, we must somehow do them as if they were not. It is a serious matter to choose wholesome recreations: but they would no longer be recreations if we pursued them seriously. … For a great deal (not all) of our literature was made to be read lightly for entertainment. If we do not read it, in a sense, “for fun” … we are not using it as it was meant to be used, and all our criticism of it will be pure illusion. For you cannot judge any artefact except by using it as it was intended. It is no good judging a butter-knife by seeing whether it will saw logs.

I would never have thought that Plato would be listed among the “literature…made to be read lightly,” and no doubt it isn’t exactly. But last night, as I was reading Book 1 of the Republic, I thought of this young man reading Plato at sunrise on the deck of his ship, and I began to understand what he meant. I was struck by the humor in the exchange between Socrates and Thrasymachus, how it felt almost like a sitcom set-up. The language being knocked back and forth like a tennis ball sort of reminded me of an Abbot and Costello skit. The way Socrates played with language and meaning so deftly and cheerfully, compared with Thrasymachus stumping and stomping around, taking himself ridiculously too seriously, and entirely unaware of the meaning behind his words. He honestly reminded me of a character like George Castanza or Dwight Schrute. I expected my mind to be dazzled by the heights of intellectual and philosophical acrobatics, and here I was chuckling over the dialogue. It was actual fun to read! I was surprised. But Lewis knew this, too. Of course.

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said.

The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator.

The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

C.S. Lewis, Introduction to On the Incarnation (emphasis mine)

Art, whether literary or other, is a bridge to the transcendent and a serious thing. But it is also a delightful, enjoyable, pleasurable thing. Would any of us stick around if it weren’t? If it were always heavy and serious, demanding long solemn considerations of us every single time we came before a work of Art, would we still seek it out? Probably some people would, those who are more of Thrasymachus’ ilk, taking themselves and everything else so seriously all the time. But I don’t think the majority of us have the stomach for it.

It is important to remember that just to enjoy a work of Art is a legitimate way of engaging with it. Enjoyment is the not simply having mindless fun or being lightly entertained. It is a clearing of our vision. To enjoy something like a dandelion, for example, means that all our categories of “weed” and “flower” fall away. We look at the small bright flower blooming like a tiny sun in our lawn and slowly, we begin to actually see it as it is, apart from those labels. And when we see it in this way, we begin to learn to enjoy it for its own sake, maybe even as we dig out its taproot. When we see something as it is in itself and enjoy it for exactly that, we begin to appreciate it as it ought to be appreciated. And this simple appreciation is the first step to loving a thing as it ought to be loved.

When I read Book 1 of The Republic last night, I had my categories of “classical” and “philosophy” and “difficult books” in place, but they all quickly fell away. I started the book because I was curious to read Plato and I wanted to challenge myself. I continued because it was simply delightful to read.

That’s not to say we only read what is easy or stick to those books that don’t challenge us in some way. A literary athlete, so to speak, wants to find new ways to exercise the reading muscles, and a mature reader can find enjoyment even in a difficult book. If you start reading something outside your usual choice, whether to train your taste or to grow as a reader, enjoy the challenge. It’s like doing a difficult hike or a hard work-out – half the enjoyment is feeling the muscles in your body move and burn and be taken to the limit of their ability; half the enjoyment is the challenge. Where we grow in our reading ability, we widen our capacity for more enjoyment.

So, back to my original question: why read?

The answer is simple:

“… but first, for pleasure.”

"After a certain kind of sherry party, where there have been cataracts of culture but never one word or one glance that suggested a real enjoyment of any art, any person, or any natural object, my heart warms to the schoolboy on the bus who is reading Fantasy and Science Fiction, rapt and oblivious of all the world beside. For here also I should feel that I had met something real and live and unfabricated; genuine literary experience, spontaneous and compulsive, disinterested. I should have hopes of that boy. Those who have greatly cared for any book whatever may possibly come to care, some day, for good books. The organs of appreciation exist in them. They are not impotent. And even if this particular boy is never going to like anything severer than science-fiction, even so,
'The child whose love is here, at least doth reap
One precious gain, that he forgets himself.'"

C.S. Lewis, Lilies that Fester