Why We Read

Why do we read anyway? As a communications technology, writing has pretty obvious utility. But that's not why we read Dave Barry, Robert Ludlum, Paul Krugman. Ever since audio tape, we've potentially had the option of listening. Of course, we do like to listen--the enduring popularity of radio (and TV when we're not directly watching it) are proof of that. But if recreational reading were about wanting to be told stories, why didn't electronic audio supplant text for most purposes long ago? Isn't it less effort to listen than to read? And what is it that makes audio books less appealing? I might love Meryl Streep's voice, or Anthony Hopkin's, in a voice-over. For some reason, though, listening to them read an entire book to me seems a lot less appealing.

I don't think I have all the answers here, but I think I do have a partial-explanation theory I can't remember committing to writing before. (If you've seen it elsewhere, earlier, please write me.)

We listen when we want to be told things. We read when we want to love the sound of our own voices--perhaps to love our voices more than we have any right to, but nevertheless to love our own voices all the same.

I can hear the objections already. "I read authors because I love the sound of their voices!" Well, yes, that's true as well. But it's after the fact, I will argue. "I hate my voice when I read something aloud and listen to a recording of it! Don't you?" No doubt. I know the feeling. But I'm not talking about your real voice. I'm talking about your own voice as it would be most loved by you.

Studies of the psychology of reading have shown that we all subvocalize when we read. Forget speed reading. (I love Woody Allen's old joke about that, about reading War and Peace in two hours in a bookstore: "It's about Russia.") Even if you don't move your lips when you read, slight subliminal vocal muscle movement is recorded, correlating with what you're taking in.

So here's my theory: all text you read is merely support for a kind of fiction, in which you take on the author's voice, and in that way, slip into the author's persona. Reality has nothing to do with it. As Mark Twain said, fiction must be believable, but reality is under no such constraint. We continue reading because of a willing suspension of disbelief, a temporary-delusion self-flattery that we are saying things as well as the writer, that we are capable of the writer's imagination. This doesn't preclude a certain sense of distance from the text, from which we can also admire the writer as a writer. But the main impetus for moving from one sentence to the next is to get this feeling: "I'm saying this. I'm telling the story." When we say we love a piece of writing, we're mainly reporting on the (admittedly false) experience of being the story teller ourselves.