WEBVTT 00:00:15.849 --> 00:00:17.169 Why read? 00:00:17.169 --> 00:00:18.879 We live in a digital world. 00:00:18.879 --> 00:00:23.800 We live in a world of screens, of iPhones, of ephemera. 00:00:23.800 --> 00:00:27.850 Why sit there with the physical book? 00:00:27.850 --> 00:00:30.929 This famous picture of Rembrandt's mother 00:00:30.929 --> 00:00:37.230 shows us how the act of reading in so many ways is an act of absorption. 00:00:37.230 --> 00:00:41.580 The notion of reading is not just the absorption of information; 00:00:41.580 --> 00:00:43.580 it is a physical process. 00:00:43.580 --> 00:00:46.940 What I would like to share with you this afternoon are the ways - 00:00:46.940 --> 00:00:50.510 they told me there would be 150 people here. 00:00:50.820 --> 00:00:52.740 Where is everybody? 00:00:52.740 --> 00:00:58.680 This notion of reading as absorption is the magic of reading. 00:00:58.680 --> 00:01:00.780 The book is a physical object, 00:01:00.780 --> 00:01:04.570 and learning how to read as a child 00:01:04.570 --> 00:01:08.870 shapes the physical, visual and cognitive imagination. 00:01:08.870 --> 00:01:14.449 Before this talk, I prepared by googling "guy reading." 00:01:14.449 --> 00:01:16.119 And this is what I got. 00:01:16.119 --> 00:01:19.740 I got a picture of a guy bending over a book. 00:01:19.740 --> 00:01:24.570 To bend over a book is to be absorbed in the book. 00:01:24.570 --> 00:01:27.470 You can see the physicality of the hand. 00:01:27.470 --> 00:01:33.339 You can see that Rodin-like, Thinker-esque move of the hand on the chin. 00:01:33.339 --> 00:01:38.239 You can see the visor over the eyes, shielding the sun. 00:01:38.239 --> 00:01:42.579 Reading a traditional book is an act of absorption. 00:01:42.579 --> 00:01:46.969 Reading on a screen is an act of spectatorship; 00:01:46.969 --> 00:01:48.520 it is theatrical. 00:01:48.520 --> 00:01:51.240 This is a picture from the late 1980s, 00:01:51.240 --> 00:01:55.399 and I vividly remember when the screens first arrived, 00:01:55.399 --> 00:01:58.350 how we did not look down, but we looked out. 00:01:58.350 --> 00:02:01.000 We did not put our hands on our chins, 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:03.700 but we pointed our fingers at the screens. 00:02:03.700 --> 00:02:05.129 And you can see here, 00:02:05.129 --> 00:02:08.769 as the man leans over the woman, pointing at the screen, 00:02:08.769 --> 00:02:12.334 you can see here how the very act of reading 00:02:12.334 --> 00:02:17.400 changes your physical relationship to the text - 00:02:17.400 --> 00:02:21.910 from one of privacy, absorption and involvement 00:02:21.910 --> 00:02:26.850 to one of spectatorship, of theatricality, of publicness. 00:02:26.850 --> 00:02:32.710 It's very hard to read privately with a screen. 00:02:32.710 --> 00:02:36.800 Therefore, in the early 21st century, 00:02:36.800 --> 00:02:40.280 the e-book emerged, I believe, 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:44.400 as a way of recovering, digitally, 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:48.180 the experience of reading privately. 00:02:48.180 --> 00:02:50.850 The e-book is not a real book. 00:02:50.850 --> 00:02:54.980 The e-book is a simulacrum of a book. 00:02:54.980 --> 00:02:59.660 They replace paper with something electronic. 00:02:59.660 --> 00:03:06.210 E-books are to real books as e-cigarettes are to real cigarettes. 00:03:06.610 --> 00:03:08.450 Did you like that one? 00:03:08.450 --> 00:03:09.790 You think that's very funny? 00:03:09.790 --> 00:03:12.085 Next time I do this, I'm going to travel with you 00:03:12.085 --> 00:03:14.827 so you can sit in the front and laugh loudly with people. 00:03:14.827 --> 00:03:16.390 (Laughter) 00:03:16.390 --> 00:03:19.160 How many of you are grown-ups in this audience? 00:03:19.160 --> 00:03:22.720 I spend all my life talking about digital culture. 00:03:22.720 --> 00:03:23.735 You know, at my age, 00:03:23.735 --> 00:03:26.887 the only word that should follow digital is "examination." 00:03:26.887 --> 00:03:27.970 (Laughter) 00:03:27.970 --> 00:03:30.540 That's what - that's a joke for the adults. 00:03:31.160 --> 00:03:33.920 How many of you smoke e-cigarettes? 00:03:34.460 --> 00:03:36.880 How many of you smoke real cigarettes? 00:03:37.100 --> 00:03:40.520 How many of you couldn't give a fl- about what I'm talking about? 00:03:41.060 --> 00:03:42.610 E-cigarettes. 00:03:42.610 --> 00:03:44.555 They are like e-books. 00:03:44.555 --> 00:03:48.700 They are the technological and mechanical instruments 00:03:48.700 --> 00:03:50.650 for delivering pleasure 00:03:50.650 --> 00:03:53.800 that used to be delivered through paper. 00:03:53.800 --> 00:03:57.940 They are a simulacrum of the experience. 00:03:57.940 --> 00:04:00.770 And I believe very strongly, 00:04:00.770 --> 00:04:05.720 whether you read on a tablet or whether you read on a screen, 00:04:05.720 --> 00:04:08.640 you need to return to the physical book. 00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:10.840 And you need to recognize 00:04:10.840 --> 00:04:14.380 that for as long as literacy has been around, 00:04:14.380 --> 00:04:17.290 the physical book, the illustrated book 00:04:17.290 --> 00:04:22.210 has been central to the formation of the child, the human being. 00:04:22.210 --> 00:04:26.200 This is a papyrus manuscript from the 3rd century. 00:04:26.200 --> 00:04:29.070 It represents the Labors of Hercules. 00:04:29.070 --> 00:04:34.760 This is the earliest illustrated children's book that survives. 00:04:34.760 --> 00:04:38.970 Why were the Labors of Hercules children's book reading? 00:04:38.970 --> 00:04:44.860 Because in school, every child felt Herculean: 00:04:44.860 --> 00:04:46.930 "How am I going to pass that test? 00:04:46.930 --> 00:04:49.170 It's like conquering the Nemean lion." 00:04:49.170 --> 00:04:52.110 "How am I going to fulfill the assignment? 00:04:52.110 --> 00:04:55.290 It's like sweeping out the Augean stables." 00:04:55.290 --> 00:04:59.280 "How am I going to show up for a class at 9:30 in the morning? 00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:02.820 It's like slicing off the heads of the Hydra." 00:05:02.820 --> 00:05:06.920 The image of Hercules fighting the lion 00:05:06.920 --> 00:05:13.580 becomes the emblem of reading and learning as an act of heroic labor. 00:05:13.580 --> 00:05:16.480 It is also an act of devotion. 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:21.100 This beautifully illuminated manuscript from the Anglo-Saxon period 00:05:21.100 --> 00:05:25.760 shows us how in the study of the Psalms, the study of the Bible, 00:05:25.760 --> 00:05:30.140 the purpose of the book was to attract the child's attention. 00:05:30.140 --> 00:05:34.790 King Alfred the Great, who was king of the Anglo-Saxons in the 890s, 00:05:34.790 --> 00:05:37.665 wrote about how his own mother 00:05:37.665 --> 00:05:42.330 showed him a beautifully illustrated book, as a child. 00:05:42.330 --> 00:05:43.600 And the word he uses - 00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:47.530 now remember, this is old stuff so he's talking and writing in Latin - 00:05:47.530 --> 00:05:51.330 he says it's "pulchritude," female beauty. 00:05:51.330 --> 00:05:57.080 He is electus; he is seduced and drawn in by the pulchritude, 00:05:57.080 --> 00:05:58.760 by the beauty of the book. 00:05:58.760 --> 00:06:02.670 Is reading a form of seduction? 00:06:02.670 --> 00:06:06.060 Reading is certainly a form of seduction here 00:06:06.060 --> 00:06:09.000 in this manuscript of Terence's plays, 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:12.480 prepared for a schoolroom in a monastery, 00:06:12.480 --> 00:06:16.920 where the children would see the representation of the actors, 00:06:16.920 --> 00:06:19.765 they would see the visual ways 00:06:19.765 --> 00:06:25.450 in which the story that they were reading is presented to their mind's eye. 00:06:25.450 --> 00:06:27.720 When print came into Europe, 00:06:27.720 --> 00:06:32.135 one of the first things that was printed was Aesop's Fables, 00:06:32.135 --> 00:06:36.052 those childish stories of talking animals, 00:06:36.052 --> 00:06:41.560 of rabbits and hares, of foxes and wolves and goats, 00:06:41.560 --> 00:06:44.810 all of whom took on a moral quality. 00:06:44.810 --> 00:06:47.330 There you see the figure of Aesopus. 00:06:47.330 --> 00:06:49.270 There you see the animals. 00:06:49.270 --> 00:06:50.790 Are you seduced? 00:06:50.790 --> 00:06:52.240 Are you attracted? 00:06:52.240 --> 00:06:55.520 Are you excited by the visual image of the book? 00:06:55.520 --> 00:06:59.640 When I was a child, the books that I fell in love with 00:06:59.650 --> 00:07:01.880 were the illustrated children's books 00:07:01.880 --> 00:07:04.610 by the writer and painter Robert McCloskey: 00:07:04.610 --> 00:07:05.910 "One Morning in Maine," 00:07:05.910 --> 00:07:07.330 "Blueberries for Sal," 00:07:07.330 --> 00:07:09.180 "Make Way for Ducklings," 00:07:09.180 --> 00:07:11.350 and "Time of Wonder." 00:07:11.350 --> 00:07:15.530 These are books that Illustrated to the child 00:07:15.530 --> 00:07:21.100 the possibility not just of an imaginary but of an aesthetic life. 00:07:21.100 --> 00:07:23.240 Life was beautiful. 00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:24.925 The job of reading 00:07:24.925 --> 00:07:28.060 was to experience the beauty of the world 00:07:28.060 --> 00:07:32.980 as represented by the artist and the illustrator. 00:07:32.980 --> 00:07:35.320 "Time of Wonder" is a story. 00:07:35.320 --> 00:07:41.190 It's a book that was published in 1957, when I was two years old. 00:07:41.190 --> 00:07:46.380 And we began reading it in my family throughout the '50s and the '60s. 00:07:46.380 --> 00:07:48.765 We were fascinated by the idea 00:07:48.765 --> 00:07:54.790 that here was a family living on the coast of the state of Maine. 00:07:54.950 --> 00:07:57.640 I was a child in Brooklyn. 00:07:57.640 --> 00:08:00.320 Maine was another country for me. 00:08:00.320 --> 00:08:01.670 It was exotic. 00:08:01.670 --> 00:08:04.510 The very idea that there was a coastline, 00:08:04.510 --> 00:08:09.460 the very idea that one could see poetry and passion, 00:08:09.460 --> 00:08:11.880 magic and miracle 00:08:11.880 --> 00:08:16.040 in a coming storm over the sea. 00:08:16.040 --> 00:08:20.660 This beautiful illustration and the poetic text that accompanies it 00:08:20.660 --> 00:08:22.142 shows us how, 00:08:22.142 --> 00:08:25.225 hoping for a chance to drop out of the channel, 00:08:25.225 --> 00:08:30.030 the fishing boat wallows in the waves, seeking the shelter. 00:08:30.030 --> 00:08:32.129 You can hear in the alliteration, 00:08:32.129 --> 00:08:34.329 you can hear in the rhythm there, 00:08:34.329 --> 00:08:38.960 the poetry of the water lapping on the shore. 00:08:38.960 --> 00:08:43.849 And in the course of this book, there is a storm that comes up. 00:08:44.500 --> 00:08:46.885 The storm comes through. 00:08:46.885 --> 00:08:50.010 It blows through the parlor. 00:08:50.010 --> 00:08:52.280 It wrecks the living room. 00:08:52.280 --> 00:08:57.060 The Parcheesi game board skittles across the floor. 00:08:57.060 --> 00:08:58.680 The books are gone. 00:08:58.680 --> 00:09:00.730 The mother reaches for the children. 00:09:00.730 --> 00:09:02.600 The lamp has disappeared. 00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:07.490 It is as if a trauma has come through the house. 00:09:07.490 --> 00:09:09.640 And when the storm is over, 00:09:09.640 --> 00:09:11.250 all is calm. 00:09:11.250 --> 00:09:12.530 Look at this picture. 00:09:12.530 --> 00:09:18.010 Now the mother and the children sing their own psalms of joy, 00:09:18.010 --> 00:09:24.160 the books once again placed perfectly open and closed on the table. 00:09:24.160 --> 00:09:25.455 And Dad. 00:09:25.455 --> 00:09:27.920 Remember, this is the 1950s. 00:09:27.920 --> 00:09:31.980 In the 1950s, Dad can do anything. 00:09:31.980 --> 00:09:33.530 I grew up in the '50s. 00:09:33.530 --> 00:09:36.120 When I became a dad in the 1990s, 00:09:36.120 --> 00:09:39.115 I discovered that dads can do nothing. 00:09:39.345 --> 00:09:42.170 But in the '50s, dads did everything. 00:09:42.170 --> 00:09:44.045 And you will see in this picture 00:09:44.045 --> 00:09:46.910 how the dad takes a dishcloth 00:09:46.910 --> 00:09:52.920 and covers over one of the last of the broken panes of glass - 00:09:52.920 --> 00:09:56.755 a window now broken up in frames 00:09:56.755 --> 00:10:03.110 that looks all the world like a set of splayed-open books. 00:10:03.250 --> 00:10:06.245 Each pane, each window, 00:10:06.245 --> 00:10:08.332 looking like the side of a book 00:10:08.332 --> 00:10:13.330 and matching - if you like, even rhyming visually - 00:10:13.330 --> 00:10:16.710 with the open book on the table. 00:10:17.690 --> 00:10:20.335 When I was a child in the 1950s, 00:10:20.335 --> 00:10:23.790 the world of the imagination was the world of books. 00:10:23.790 --> 00:10:27.130 But we did not have the thunderstorms of Maine. 00:10:27.130 --> 00:10:30.260 We did not have the psalters of the imagination. 00:10:30.260 --> 00:10:33.290 We had the fears of nuclear attack. 00:10:33.290 --> 00:10:37.640 Look at the difference between this picture of the family 00:10:37.640 --> 00:10:39.860 and this picture of the family. 00:10:39.860 --> 00:10:42.640 This, too, from the 1950s: 00:10:42.640 --> 00:10:44.045 the fallout shelter, 00:10:44.045 --> 00:10:48.510 the mother and the father and the child sitting around a text, 00:10:48.510 --> 00:10:52.760 now not of the imagination, but an instructional manual. 00:10:52.760 --> 00:10:55.460 And the only words you see in this picture 00:10:55.460 --> 00:11:00.310 are the words, "canned food." 00:11:00.310 --> 00:11:03.600 As if in this apocalyptic moment, 00:11:03.600 --> 00:11:07.160 we would have no words left for the imagination. 00:11:07.160 --> 00:11:10.810 And so when I grew up, and when I became a parent, 00:11:10.810 --> 00:11:16.840 I wanted to give my own son this sense of magic that I experienced, 00:11:16.840 --> 00:11:21.580 the idea that a book could take us to another world, 00:11:21.580 --> 00:11:24.730 that reading was a form of magic. 00:11:24.730 --> 00:11:27.305 And fortunately for me, 00:11:27.305 --> 00:11:30.000 and probably fortunately for many of you, 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:32.530 Harry Potter came along. 00:11:32.530 --> 00:11:36.200 Many of you think that Harry Potter is a set of stories 00:11:36.200 --> 00:11:41.710 about magic and wizardry and sorcery and the imagination. 00:11:41.710 --> 00:11:46.940 I want to argue that Harry Potter is a book about reading. 00:11:46.940 --> 00:11:49.000 Magic in Harry Potter 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:54.780 is nothing more than a heightened form of literacy. 00:11:55.230 --> 00:12:00.110 Reading in Harry Potter is the true magic. 00:12:00.110 --> 00:12:03.240 The potions, the spells, 00:12:03.240 --> 00:12:08.370 the true adventures in the world of Harry Potter go on, 00:12:08.370 --> 00:12:12.390 not on the Quidditch pitch, not in the forest, 00:12:12.390 --> 00:12:14.290 but in the library. 00:12:14.290 --> 00:12:17.110 And Hermione and Ron and Harry, 00:12:17.110 --> 00:12:20.429 as you can see in one of these screenshots 00:12:20.429 --> 00:12:22.069 from one of the films, 00:12:22.069 --> 00:12:26.770 live out their lives in the magic and mystery of the book. 00:12:26.770 --> 00:12:30.499 And so, in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," 00:12:30.499 --> 00:12:35.700 Harry comes upon an old, used book of potions. 00:12:35.700 --> 00:12:40.910 And written in the margins are corrections to the book. 00:12:40.910 --> 00:12:45.579 It tells Harry how to crush the Sopophorous bean 00:12:45.579 --> 00:12:48.650 with the back of a knife, releasing the juice. 00:12:48.650 --> 00:12:53.740 It tells Harry how to complete his assignments effectively. 00:12:53.740 --> 00:12:57.740 In the marginalia to the "Book of Potions," 00:12:57.740 --> 00:13:00.690 Harry finds the true magic of reading. 00:13:00.690 --> 00:13:04.470 What he does not yet know - and what we will soon find out - 00:13:04.470 --> 00:13:09.010 is that the Half-Blood Prince, of course, is Snape himself. 00:13:09.010 --> 00:13:11.450 Harry brings the book into the library, 00:13:11.450 --> 00:13:13.835 and the librarian is terrified 00:13:13.835 --> 00:13:17.760 that Harry has despoiled or desecrated the book. 00:13:17.760 --> 00:13:20.940 Have any of you had an encounter with a librarian? 00:13:21.340 --> 00:13:25.190 Librarians are all about keeping things clean 00:13:25.190 --> 00:13:26.950 and keeping things in order. 00:13:26.950 --> 00:13:31.360 Libraries are sites of regulation, not imagination. 00:13:31.360 --> 00:13:35.895 The job of the librarian is to keep your hands clean, 00:13:35.895 --> 00:13:37.490 to keep you quiet 00:13:37.490 --> 00:13:42.675 and to make sure that if you are late returning a book, you pay for it. 00:13:42.675 --> 00:13:48.250 These are the structures of society and civilization. 00:13:48.250 --> 00:13:51.780 For Harry Potter, the splayed margins, 00:13:51.780 --> 00:13:55.600 the almost manic marginalia here - 00:13:55.600 --> 00:13:57.055 oh, that's a good one - 00:13:57.055 --> 00:13:59.870 the almost manic marginalia - 00:13:59.870 --> 00:14:01.270 are you taking notes? - 00:14:01.270 --> 00:14:05.680 the almost manic marginalia of the book - 00:14:05.680 --> 00:14:08.760 are you going to write that one down too? good - 00:14:09.430 --> 00:14:10.960 give us the sense 00:14:10.960 --> 00:14:17.240 that the true imagination is not to be found in the lines, 00:14:17.240 --> 00:14:20.100 but all around the lines. 00:14:20.100 --> 00:14:24.260 "Levicorpus, raise the body." 00:14:24.260 --> 00:14:30.130 This is one of the spells that Harry Potter learns, 00:14:30.130 --> 00:14:34.480 written in the margins by the Half-Blood Prince. 00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:39.110 He learns the spell and takes it back to his room, 00:14:39.110 --> 00:14:42.465 where he suspends his friend Ron, 00:14:42.465 --> 00:14:48.820 as if from an invisible cord from the roof of the room. 00:14:48.820 --> 00:14:52.610 Levicorpus, raise the body. 00:14:52.610 --> 00:14:56.860 If you grew up in a Western Christian tradition, 00:14:56.860 --> 00:15:01.320 you would know that "Levicorpus, raise the body" 00:15:01.320 --> 00:15:06.810 is the idiom of the very centerpiece of Christian belief, 00:15:06.810 --> 00:15:10.150 the resurrection, raise the body, 00:15:10.150 --> 00:15:14.820 but also Levicorpus, raise the body. 00:15:14.820 --> 00:15:17.860 What I have tried to suggest to you today, 00:15:17.860 --> 00:15:21.770 at the end of a day full of digital imagination, 00:15:21.770 --> 00:15:24.010 full of virtual realities, 00:15:24.010 --> 00:15:26.370 full of professional expertise 00:15:26.370 --> 00:15:30.325 and full of instruction and success and getting ahead, 00:15:30.325 --> 00:15:35.680 is that the real magic of reading lies in Levicorpus. 00:15:35.680 --> 00:15:40.390 For what the true book does is it raises our body; 00:15:40.390 --> 00:15:45.550 it suspends us in the fantasies of fiction. 00:15:45.550 --> 00:15:47.575 The magic of the book, 00:15:47.575 --> 00:15:52.950 whether it is a magic of digital or traditional literacy, 00:15:52.950 --> 00:15:56.510 is the magic of the literate imagination. 00:15:56.510 --> 00:15:59.250 And what I've tried to suggest to you today 00:15:59.250 --> 00:16:02.120 is that by thinking about the history of the book, 00:16:02.120 --> 00:16:05.160 by thinking about your own experiences, 00:16:05.160 --> 00:16:07.405 you may ask yourselves, 00:16:07.405 --> 00:16:09.210 "Am I Ron?" 00:16:09.210 --> 00:16:10.825 "Am I Hermione?" 00:16:10.825 --> 00:16:13.070 or "Am I Hercules?" 00:16:13.070 --> 00:16:18.500 Think of yourselves now in the schoolroom of the Herculean imagination. 00:16:18.500 --> 00:16:22.860 And the next time you enter a classroom or a TED Talk, 00:16:22.860 --> 00:16:29.000 ask yourself, "Levicorpus, has the teacher raised the body? 00:16:29.020 --> 00:16:30.800 And in this book, 00:16:30.800 --> 00:16:33.944 am I suspended in by imagination?" 00:16:33.944 --> 00:16:35.426 Thank you very much. 00:16:35.426 --> 00:16:37.005 (Applause)