# How to Read/Chapter 1

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☙ HOW TO READ ❧
CHAPTER I
Learning to Read
I
A few months ago I happened to be present at a dinner where a chance question led to an interesting talk. Some phase of primary education was under discussion; and in the course of it the host, turning to one of the guests, asked, "When did you learn to read?"
"At three," was the prompt reply, given with a touch of pride.
"And you?" said the host to the next guest.
"Oh, I don't know. About five, I suppose."
"And you?" to a lady beyond.
There was a moment's embarrassed hesitation. And then, with something about scarlet fever, came the confession that she had not learned her letters till she was nine.
And thus it went, halfway round the table.
​Now these replies were direct and pertinent. They were categorical answers to a technical question. Taken separately, they gave the exact information asked for.
And yet, as they piled up, one after the other, there seemed to be something about them that I found myself vaguely resenting.
It was not what they said. It was, rather, a discernable common denominator of implication in their manner of saying it.
It seemed as though these people were leaving out of account all the other-than-technical meanings of the phrase with which they dealt, not because they were consciously excluding these deeper meanings for the moment, but because they unconsciously ignored them at all times.
There was a cumulative inflection of finality in their declarations. It almost sounded as though, in dealing with the primary-school meaning of "learning to read," they felt that they had dealt with the whole meaning of that expression. And while it never entered my head at the moment that this was really true, the fact that it was somehow being made to appear true struck me as amusing. It struck ​me as amusing enough to call attention to. And so, presently, when the host asked me when I had learned to read, I answered with a smile that I was still learning.
And to my utter astonishment it developed, in the chaffing and talk that followed, that no single member of that largely literary and more or less intellectual company had ever thought of the expression "learning to read" as having any other meaning than the technical, primary-school meaning; that, namely, of learning the alphabet, learning to recognize words made out of the alphabet, learning the dictionary meanings of more, and more, and still more words, and thus learning to receive messages sent by print or handwriting.
No one of them, it turned out, had ever asked himself what it is, exactly, that we do when we read. No one of them had ever watched himself in the act of reading. And all of them, in consequence, had retained intact the careless assumption that reading is essentially a receptive process. They all looked upon it, let us say, as though print were a sort of silent telephone, into one end of which an author delivers a message, and from the ​other end of which (by simply "knowing how to read") his audience receives it.
Now, as a matter of fact, and as we shall see presently, this is not true at all. It is not even an inadequate statement of the facts; it is a misstatement of them. And when I had pointed out something of this,—when I had, hurriedly, and to the poor best of my surprised unpreparedness, mobilized a few arguments and illustrations in defense of what I had regarded as a neutralized axiom,—we began, in the course of the give-and-take of the talk that followed, to make discoveries. And we continued, excitedly and joyously, to make them until 1 a.m.
We discovered that the common-school definition of "learning to read" is so universally accepted as the whole definition, that, while almost every newspaper and magazine publishes regular articles on what to read, none of them, so far as any of us knew, ever publishes articles on how to read. We discovered that, while there is a whole literature of books about books,—about what books it behooves us to read, and why it behooves us to read them, and what (according to the ​author) it behooves us to read into them,—there is little or nothing in the whole literature about literature that tells us anything at all about how we have to read books and what it is that we have to read into them. We discovered—But, enough! What we are here concerned with is the last discovery that we made; the discovery upon which, so to say, the inquiry culminated and broke up; the discovery that I have tried to summarize in a sentence on the title-page of this book.
We discovered that reading, so far from being a merely receptive act, is a creative process. That it is "creative," not simply in the more or less cant-sodden "artistic" sense, but in a biological sense as well. That it is an active, largely automatic, purely personal, constructive functioning. That it is, indeed, a species of anabolism. In short, that it is a form of living. And as this last expression will be found, as we proceed, progressively to absorb and adequately to sum up the essence of our successive conclusions, I will put it that it is this last "discovery"—the discovery of reading as a form of living—that I propose to examine and hope to elucidate in the following pages.
​And now, having said this much by way of introduction; having, as it were, established a mental take-off; let us, like sensible swimmers, dive at once into the deepest pool that our preliminary subject affords.
ii
Until ten or twelve years ago, no man who ever lived could tell another man a story.
I am sorry to begin by making so obviously idiotic a statement. But I have two excuses for doing so. One (which I merely mention in passing) is that the statement is literally true. The other (upon which I want to lay all possible emphasis) is that the trueness of this truth is of the essence of our inquiry.
Allow me, therefore, to repeat the statement.
From the beginning of time, right down until about ten years ago, no man ever lived who could tell another man a story. Moses could n't. Homer could n't. Chaucer could n't. The minstrels and minnesingers could n't. Dante could n't. Dickens could n't. Even Conan Doyle could n't.
The best that the very best of them ever ​succeeded in doing was to trick, or to coax, or to compel their readers or their hearers into telling stories to themselves.
"Pshaw!" you are very likely going to exclaim at this point. "Here is a man pretending to explain one idiotic statement by making another." And perhaps it does look that way. But, before we continue the discussion, let us take a few minutes off and go to the movies.
iii
That stirring photo-play, "The Two Rattlesnakes," is on the bill.
We scuttle down the darkened aisle and slip into some vacant seats near the front.
There is a little hissing splutter overhead. A flickering green frame, with "Jim meets a Rattler" inside it, springs into view on the dim curtain. And a moment later the entire audience, and we with them, have settled down into an eager, yet perfectly passive, receptivity, and are looking (through a hole in the darkness) at the arid slope of an Arizona sheep-ranch, where a cowboy with a lamb in his arms and an old ewe at his heels is picking his way down the rocky and cactus-grown ​hillside. On he comes, twisting and turning; near enough now for us to see the litheness of his limbs and his cheery eyes. Then, suddenly, there is a blur of motion at his feet. A snaky something launches its length and strikes for a second at his knee. Bewilderment, horror, realization, chase each other across his face. We see him drop the lamb; snatch out a knife; rip away the cloth; slash the naked flesh; bend to suck the poison from the wound. We watch him make a tortion bandage from the kerchief at his neck. We watch him start, limping, down the hill. We watch him waver, and stumble, and stop to rest with his hand on a boulder. We watch him press on; and fall; and get up; and struggle on again. We see him fall, and fail to rise. We see him, with a last spurt of strength, pull his six-shooter from its holster; fire three slow shots in the air; and drop back into unconsciousness. And we see a little cloud of distant dust turn into the mounted figures of his friends; see them ride furiously up; leap to the ground; gather round him; examine his hurt; lift his insert body to a horse's back, and ride away—just as the hole in the darkness disappears and ​we find ourselves back again in the dim-lit, crowded hall.
Now it would be nice to sit on the show. To see how "Mollie gets the News"—Mollie in her Harlem flat; with her sleeves rolled up above her plump forearms; interrupted in the act of touching a moist finger to a hot iron by the coming of a telegram—"Jim bitten by a rattler. Come at once." To see her drag a chair to the corner cupboard; take down the old teapot; empty its contents on the ironing-board; stuff the money into her purse; put on her wraps and go. To see her, in the next reel, poring over time-tables in an emigrant sleeper; while the other rattlesnake—a human one—watches her from across the aisle. To see him scrape acquaintance with her; learn her story; get out maps; offer suggestions; finally send a telegram of his own—"Meet me at Dry Gulch with the buckboard." To see her whisked behind fast horses to the cattle-thieves' camp. To see the cowboy raid; the timely rescue; the ride to the ranch; the reunited lovers. To see the human rattler tied hand and foot and tossed (on the same hillside that Jim came down ​in the beginning) into the center of a grim-faced circle and within reach of a coiled something that writhes, and springs, and dashes obscene fangs against his contorted face.
But we have n't time for that. We must get back to our discussion. Let us slip out quietly while the hall is dark.
iv
Do you happen to know how the movies are made?
They begin, like any other piece of fiction, in the mind of a man who has told himself a story. Having done so, he undertakes, by means of a short piece of descriptive writing (called a scenario) to guide the imagination of his readers along the road his own imagination has followed. And this scenario is submitted to a movie-manager, who, if he likes it, buys it and turns it over to his producing department.
Now the producing department of a moving-picture concern is a remarkable establishment. It has a long list of actors at its beck and call. It has a storehouses full of stage prop​erties. It has clothes-presses full of costumes. It has a card index of "likely places." It has a corps of mechanics to do its bidding. And when the scenario of an author's story is turned over to the directing intelligence of this establishment, he chooses actors for it from his troupe. He supplies them with costumes from his cupboards. He draws stage properties from his stores. He selects scenes from his card index. He has his mechanics provide effects that are not in stock. And finally, before the recording eye of the camera, he proceeds—well or I'll according to his ability and his resources—to re-tell the author's story in the concrete terms of his own equipment.
And for us who sit in the audience his re-telling—his reading of the story—is final. You may know a hillside far more picturesque than the one Jim comes down. But you cannot substitute it, in your mind, for the movie-man's hillside. I may know a girl a dozen times more Molly-ish than the Mollie of the film. But I cannot cast her for Mollie's part in "The Two Rattlesnakes." The movie-man is reading the author's story, not we. ​For the moment he stands, like St. Peter, at the gates of our imaginations. What he chooses is chosen. What he puts in is in. What he leaves out is out.
He is the first man who has told another man a story since the world began.
"But," you are perhaps exclaiming, "how then about the others? How about Virgil? And Cervantes? And Balzac? And—Marie Corelli?"
Every one of them, from the least to the greatest, has but written for the movies.
Not for the movies of the photo-theater, but for the movies of our minds.
For a novel is nothing but an elaborate scenario. And each of us is a moving-picture concern.
When we examine a book at a bookstore; when we look at the opening sentences, and read a snatch of conversation on page 247, and turn back to the last page to see how it ends,—a scenario has been submitted to the manager. When we pay down our $1.35, or present our library card to be stamped,—we have purchased the local rights in it. And when we switch on our ​electric reading-lamp, and stretch out in our favorite chair, and open the book at the first chapter,—we turn the tale over to our producing department.
And the producing department of a human moving-picture concern is also a remarkable establishment.
All the people we have ever known, plus thousands we have spoken to, or crossed eyes with in a crowd, or watched in public places, or merely glimpsed in passing, are actors at its beck and call. And it can, moreover, pick and choose, not only among these actors, but among their attributes. It can, and that in the twinkling of an eye, take a chance expression on the face of one's best friend, the body of a blacksmith seen years since at a country crossroad, the mustache of yesterday's organ-grinder, and the eyes of last year's cotillion leader, and cast the composite of them (together with the composite suggestion of personality that results) as the villain of a piece.
It, too, has memory storehouses full of stage properties; mental cupboards crammed with costumes; a brain-cell index of likely ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/24 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/25 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/26 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/27 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/28 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/29 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/30 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/31 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/32 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/33 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/34 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/35 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/36 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/37 ​Page:How To Read (Kerfoot).djvu/38