What stood out to me about this was the assumption that print mediums invite deep reading. There are certainly types of print texts that invite immersion into the fictional world they create, but this does not always engender a close reading of that material. Take, for example, the writings of popular authors like Suzanne Collins--of Hunger Games fame--or Dan Brown. Their texts invite the reader to become deeply immersed in the linear storyline, which is a common characteristic of popular fiction. When reading either of these authors it is easy to block out distractions in favor of “finding out what happens next”, but as stated before, this does not mean close reading. In fact, close reading almost invites hyper attention in these texts, because they are texts that do not invite a close reading. The layering of meaning just doesn’t exist on the same level that is available in more complex literary works either print or digital.
When I first read the Da Vinci Code it was an easy read. I was able to immerse myself in the storyline, only vaguely aware of anything beyond the immediate desire to find out how the story would end. Because of this I read much faster. My goal wasn’t to enjoy Dan Brown’s masterful prose (his mastery, after all, nonexistent), so I didn’t need to read closely. Skimming would do, although I don’t think I considered the type of reading I was doing skimming, at the time, and I’m sure I skim website much faster because I don’t necessarily read web pages.
When I began to read Hunger Games, however, I found it difficult to get into--as a graduate student rather than a high schooler. I wasn’t used to immersing myself in popular fiction, or entering into the spirit of page turning fiction. Instead, I was used to reading sentences over several times. Only, the more I read or reread the first few sentences of Hunger Games the less sense it made. I set the free sample aside, and decided Hunger Games was a stupid book. There were a few more moments like this, over the course of my fall 2011 semester. I would think I was ready for some mindless fiction, only to discover that I couldn’t read mindless fiction anymore.
Well, this isn’t true. I could read Hunger Games, it turns out, I just couldn’t read it like it was a piece of theory, or like a literature book that I might write a paper about--at least, not on the first read through. Once I saw the movie I began reading the book again, but this time I wasn’t close reading every word, looking for some deeper message, or all the different angles on each sentence. I knew what the basic story was, and I was more interesting in reaching what happened next, so I flew through the entire series in a week (that’s 800 pages of reading, by the way). The faster I read the more sense the novels made, and the slower I read, with closer attention to the construction of individual sentences, the less sense they made. These books weren’t written for close reading. The sentences weren’t carefully crafted for multiple meanings--although, many Hunger Games fans will argue to the death with you about the deep psychological layering of characters, and how important that is to the plot.
Because of this experience, it seems like there must be some kind of reading that is between deep, close readings and hyper attentive readings. I would argue that linear narratives designed for ease of comprehension, don’t necessarily reach the deepest layer of attention that humans are capable of. Instead, popular fiction seems designed to induce a deep enough attention to create a feeling of disembodiment, without deep awareness of the text as a text.
Of course, it’s typical of Hayles to leave her readers enough room to problematize the sources she is presenting, before problematizing them herself. Hayles eventually mentions that reading shouldn’t just be about comprehension or memorization and regurgitation of a plotline. Furthermore, she points out that for practiced close readers nonlinear texts are a welcome challenge that become about more than memorization of material, but that would be another blog post.
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