2/4/2006

I have just finished reading The Chosen (for the second time) & The Promise (for the first) by Chaim Potok. I have discovered why a book is such a harder entertainment than the TV, and not just because it requires the trained ability to read versus the natural ability to see & hear. The TV is easy. I can come home, turn it on and be absolutely passive. I can get up and move around while it's on, preparing my dinner, cleaning the house, checking my email. It only requires a portion of my brain & none of my heart or soul. It is just as easy to turn it off as it is to turn on. When I am tired, it is no great difficulty to leave it and go to bed. When errands need to be done or chores be completed, it is no great hardship to leave the TV because, since it has required nothing of me, I have given nothing to it. I fee no great sympathy for those on-screen and no compulsion to continue viewing. My life continues, unchanged.
Not so with a book, however. A book requires your whole attention and therefore captures your whole being as a result. To read a great book is to abandon living for a moment. No longer can you go about your daily routine. You are trapped by the images it evokes. Meals go unprepared & uneaten, sleep is no longer a necessity. You cannot leave it to use the restroom, so it come with you and, should you have been foolish to start on a day when you had to be somewhere, well . . . you will most likely be late. A good book makes you tardy to work, keeps you holed up in your office during breaks and leaves you daydreaming in the office. It even keeps you from driving home after work; so intent is your devotion that you sit in the car to finish it. For however long it takes, that book and your life are the same. You feel the characters' pain, you laugh in their joy and drown in their sorrow.
Then, the inevitable comes. You finish the book. You set it down and slowly come back to reality. You look around, slowly realizing that you are no longer in 1950s New York, or 16th century Europe, or wherever else the book may have taken you. You are here, in your house (or at work, or sitting in your car) and you are a person with a life independent of the book. You have events to attend, responsibilities to be taken care of, friends and family to connect with. You know this. And yet, for a few moments, you can't leave the book behind. You may try to capture the feeling by re-reading a favorite passage but it is not the same. So you set the book aside and wander aimlessly, trying to collect your thoughts, trying to re-enter the world in which you live. "The kitchen should be cleaned," you may think, "but what are mundane chores compared to the suffering I have just experienced?" Or, "I should really call my friend back . . . but how can she share in this inexpressable joy?" Slowly, slowly, your senses return and you move on, realizing that part of you has been left with the book, but part of it has come with you. Life returns to normal, tasks are completed and you are once again your own self . . . until the sweet seductive song of another book ensares you.
That is why it is easier to watch TV than read a book. Yes, much easier to remain a neutral observer than an impassioned participant. But oh, how less satisfying . . .