Margaret's Column

Then four years ago, I began having trouble seeing words on the page. They looked lumpy, as if somebody had smeared them with mashed potatoes. This, of course, sent me to the optometrist. During the exam she discovered what she called the worst cataracts she’d ever seen in anyone under sixty (I was, and still am, CONSIDERABLY under sixty).

Then two surgeries, two weeks apart. Lots of drops. My vision cleared up,  although I now needed reading glasses (I never got used to bifocals). Ten days after the second surgery, the retina in my right eye tore. I had the surgery to fix that less than a day after I noticed the tear. This meant two weeks off of work, doing nothing. This was not a vacation; nothing means nothing. No chores, no exercise. Long periods each day lying on your side. Even more drops, and almost no reading.

When the eye recovered, I discovered that my reading speed had dropped. Strangely, I didn’t really mind. I don’t know if it was a shift in my attitude, or maybe the things I was reading, but I began to enjoy reading more slowly.

Perhaps it was my (now expired) youth, but now I think I was in too much of a hurry. Now I no longer regret my lost speed. If you read more slowly, you begin to sink into the book’s mood.

The book that did this for me was Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. It’s a good length, about four-hundred pages in the edition I have. Lots of plot, lots of intrigue. But for many, many pages, nothing happens. The point of the book becomes the slow, almost smothering sense of decay in Gormenghast Castle and the lives of the characters. It’s not pleasant, but it’s seductive; it pulls you right in, so when it’s time to eat or do laundry, you close the book-and feel almost like you’ve just woken from a deep sleep.

I’d read books with great atmosphere before, but I had never experienced this. It happened again with Lawrence Durrell’s Justine. Again, not a lot of action. Most of what happens is internal. But you just plunge your head into Alexandria of the 1920's-and drink deep.

Now I’m almost through with The Dark Tower VII. It’s going to take me about twelve days. A few years ago, I would have read it in about two or three, depending on other commitments. It’s strange; some part of me doesn’t want to finish it. Not because I know this won’t have a happy ending (if it does, it better be hard-earned). It’s because I’ll miss the mood, the texture of the thing, that almost-physical sense of falling into another world.

Perhaps you should try this some time. Pick up a book and don’t even think about how quickly you can finish it. Treat it like a lover; go slow and savor your time together. You may end up reading fewer books, but the rewards will be richer.