Illuminating texts

To learn to read, after all, is a descent into silence. I can still conjure the school room where I first began to puzzle out words on a page: our wooden desks, the map of the world rolled up above the chalkboard, green canvas shades partially drawn over high windows, manila cards strung around the room, which illustrated the alphabet in cursive script. We sat at our desks and read our pages aloud, mouthing syllables amongst each other, if not to each other, and to our teacher. Stumbling, smoothing, repeating the words again and again. How quickly we took to it might determine whether we would outdistance our parents - farmers, plumbers, small-business owners, housewives - or follow in their footsteps. Soon, we began whispering the words to ourselves, then mouthing them silently. Finally they sped by faster than we could possibly say. How long that all took I now have no idea, but the silence, I know, was an accomplishment.

I’ve always believed that the silence surrounding my reading was a cleared space for attention in a noisy, busy world, and that my eye running across the page had to be an asset since I’ll never read all the books I’d like to, and there are hundreds of thousands more being published every year. Yet, I remember so little of all my reading and rereading. Even when I try to recall the books that have grabbed me by the throat, I can conjure no more than a few scenes, or the bare outlines of a plot, or a striking line: “When it rains we would like to cry.’’ Where does the absorption in the moment go? Why isn’t there more space for all those hours in the cramped and cluttered place I imagine my memory to be?