Yaron Glazer
In the time before memory there was a boy and he loved to read. He read like it was going out of style, which it was, though he didn’t realize it at the time even though the characters in his sci-fi novels never read books. This boy could read for hours on end, often staying up through the night and only noticing when it was like 6 am and daylight was creeping in under the blinds. He finished all 6 of the Dune books in 3 weeks this way, and all 5 books of the Hitchhiker’s trilogy.
That love grew and grew, and soon the boy started reading literary fiction. He chewed through the classics. He had a Russian period. He vowed to finish every book he started. He read Ulysses and Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest, and then he read them again. There was no other direction his obsession could go. He had to start writing.
If you’ve made it this far, I’m just going to go ahead and give away the ending here and confirm that the boy in the story is indeed David Mitchell. Okay, fine, it’s me. But you’ll never guess the rest…
Because slowly at first, and then faster and more noticeably, our boy lost his amazing ability to read. He finished Atlas Shrugged and promptly denounced his childish vow to finish every book. He struggled with literary fiction and found himself returning to sci-fi. For twenty years, his head had been bombarded by news and information and movies and all manner of substances. Then social media came along and killed his sickly attention span dead.
Don’t get me wrong. I still love getting lost in books. It’s just much harder now, because I don’t have the patience to let authors build their story. Hell, these days I’m proud of myself if I can sit still and read 4 paragraphs without clicking a link or checking my inbox. I need my novels to be instantly engaging. But I also still want them to conjure up fully formed worlds as they drag me through them by the eyeballs.
Wouldn’t it be great if some book out there could do both?
That love grew and grew, and soon the boy started reading literary fiction. He chewed through the classics. He had a Russian period. He vowed to finish every book he started. He read Ulysses and Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest, and then he read them again. There was no other direction his obsession could go. He had to start writing.
If you’ve made it this far, I’m just going to go ahead and give away the ending here and confirm that the boy in the story is indeed David Mitchell. Okay, fine, it’s me. But you’ll never guess the rest…
Because slowly at first, and then faster and more noticeably, our boy lost his amazing ability to read. He finished Atlas Shrugged and promptly denounced his childish vow to finish every book. He struggled with literary fiction and found himself returning to sci-fi. For twenty years, his head had been bombarded by news and information and movies and all manner of substances. Then social media came along and killed his sickly attention span dead.
Don’t get me wrong. I still love getting lost in books. It’s just much harder now, because I don’t have the patience to let authors build their story. Hell, these days I’m proud of myself if I can sit still and read 4 paragraphs without clicking a link or checking my inbox. I need my novels to be instantly engaging. But I also still want them to conjure up fully formed worlds as they drag me through them by the eyeballs.
Wouldn’t it be great if some book out there could do both?
