I initially read for the sheer amazement and joy of the
miracle of being able to read things. I really didn't care
what it was I was reading. This turned into a sort of
challenge-myself reading: could I read it? was there anything
I could not read? When I read the Declaration of Independence
at the end of first grade (with few miscues if not always
full comprehension) I decided I could read well enough.
I have only very hazy memories of early reading. I found
books for children very boring and insulting intellectually.
My mother and I fought a major battle to have me issued
an Adult library card at the local library (about grade
3 or 4) when I had exhausted my interest in the children's
section and begun to follow her into the adult section
and pick things up to read. I got the card when the head
librarian handed me a book at random and I read it aloud
miscuelessly.
I read relatively little fiction until I discovered
science fiction. I mainly read in astronomy, and paleontology.
A teacher taking a graduate in-service course gave me
her Sociology textbook one day to look at a picture
(which I still remember: facing photos of formal dress
in European culture and traditional tribal Africa). This
was a revelation and a new interest. I read some of the book
but not all of it.
In high school I still read mainly science and science
fiction (yes, I was pretty 'narrow' then; doesn't seem to
have hurt). I read required literature, most of which I
hated, esp. the English novel. I liked poetry, loved Poe
(who is critically undervalued in my opinion, not that
I take such things very seriously). Finally discovered
world literature, read the Greeks and Dostoevsky. Also
discovered philosophy, read the classics and a lot of
non-Western religious-philosophical material (grades
10-12). I read these things as part of personal projects
and agendas. We were assigned one Greek tragedy, I read
all the extant plays. We were never assigned Dostoevsky,
thank God. (I had one good literature teacher, bless her.)
In the midst of Doestoevsky I discovered "speed reading",
offered as a special course at my high school. It was
a challenge, my counselor said it would help with the
reading load in college. I ruined Crime and Punishment
in this way (yes, we were told that speed should be
a function of text-type, but novels were to be done
at maximum speed :), getting up to a maximum full
comprehension (?) rate of about 1500 wpm from my initial
natural rate of about 300-400 then. I soon gave up on
this foolishness, though it is useful to be able to
adjust reading rate consciously (unless I skim, I now
stay below 800 wpm).
Please remember that this was in the heyday of psychometric
definitions of ability, intelligence, etc. I also took
lots of IQ tests and later told people where they could
stick them and why.
My present reading strategies, tastes, and style date
in part from my serendipitous wanderings through the
University of Chicago library stacks, begun in my
first year there and continued till I left. There was
a small change when I began to be a serious writer of
ideas, a few years after I finished my PhD in physics.
Then I came to read as grist for a mill, as resources
to be incorporated in my own work almost exclusively,
except for light reading and necessary professional
'work' reading (I do not consider my research 'work',
it is pure pleasure, more like a hobby).
I will leave a few more general comments to a separate
note. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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