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Lipton’s Journal/February 21, 1955/654: Difference between revisions
Lipton’s Journal/February 21, 1955/654 (view source)
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Over the weekend I took many notes, and had a host of word echoes. In the reading dingus on ''Omnibus'' I noticed something with interest. They showed pages to read and gave you various times. To my pleasure I noticed that I was now a slower-than-average reader, I who as recently as two years ago had the fastest reading rate Fig Gwaltney{{refn|Francis I. Gwaltney (1921-1980) joined {{NM}}’s unit in Luzon and they began a close friendship that continued after the war. “Fig,” as he was called, also became a novelist and wrote a novel of Pacific combat titled ''The Day the Century Ended'' (1955). A professor at Arkansas Tech University, he introduced a local high school art teacher, Barbara Davis Norris, to Mailer in 1975. She later became his sixth wife and changed her name to [[Norris Church Mailer]].}} ever came across in the Nelson-Dinny test which I at the time called the Motherwell-Ginsberg test—how revealing. | Over the weekend I took many notes, and had a host of word echoes. In the reading dingus on ''Omnibus''{{refn|''[[w:Omnibus (American TV program)|Omnibus]]'' was an educational discussion program, hosted by Alistair Cooke, on network television from 1952-1961.}} I noticed something with interest. They showed pages to read and gave you various times. To my pleasure I noticed that I was now a slower-than-average reader, I who as recently as two years ago had the fastest reading rate Fig Gwaltney{{refn|Francis I. Gwaltney (1921-1980) joined {{NM}}’s unit in Luzon and they began a close friendship that continued after the war. “Fig,” as he was called, also became a novelist and wrote a novel of Pacific combat titled ''The Day the Century Ended'' (1955). A professor at Arkansas Tech University, he introduced a local high school art teacher, Barbara Davis Norris, to Mailer in 1975. She later became his sixth wife and changed her name to [[Norris Church Mailer]].}} ever came across in the Nelson-Dinny test which I at the time called the Motherwell-Ginsberg test—how revealing. | ||
Anyway, they had a dried up old prune of a schmoo talking about how to increase one’s reading speed on ''Omnibus'' and he talked about all the blocks to quick reading. One stops too often on each word, one reads words backwards, ''at least children do'' (Dr. Pruneface said so). (God and dog—which the old bugger commented on) in short one does not “absorb” rapidly. Then he talked about modern reading methods. My suspicion of them is well-founded. To grasp the word as a whole is to lose the richness of a word. Modern reading methods make experts, they do not make artists. For the expert is capable of taking the mass and giving it a name, a one—he has sublime disinterest in understanding-taking, he is interested in nomenclature-one-giving. | Anyway, they had a dried up old prune of a schmoo talking about how to increase one’s reading speed on ''Omnibus'' and he talked about all the blocks to quick reading. One stops too often on each word, one reads words backwards, ''at least children do'' (Dr. Pruneface said so). (God and dog—which the old bugger commented on) in short one does not “absorb” rapidly. Then he talked about modern reading methods. My suspicion of them is well-founded. To grasp the word as a whole is to lose the richness of a word. Modern reading methods make experts, they do not make artists. For the expert is capable of taking the mass and giving it a name, a one—he has sublime disinterest in understanding-taking, he is interested in nomenclature-one-giving. | ||
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So my poetic insight about academicians seems to have confirmation. To become an academician, an expert, one must amass mountains of “knowledge” which means one must read quickly. But to read too quickly is to get the gist and not the orgasm—geist. (The artist has the ability to take the one and make it enormously various, the opposite of the expert, the critic, the academician. All those latter gentlemen seek answers. The artist seeks questions. This I learned from Malaquais,{{LJ:Malaquais}} who once said in a passion, “There are no answers. There are only questions.”) So, the academician is drawn to the subject which intrigues him least—in other words, he can read it the fastest because he finds it the least disturbing and stimulating. He takes less as he reads so he can read efficiently. Which is why editors often get little out of a book—they read too quickly. | So my poetic insight about academicians seems to have confirmation. To become an academician, an expert, one must amass mountains of “knowledge” which means one must read quickly. But to read too quickly is to get the gist and not the orgasm—geist. (The artist has the ability to take the one and make it enormously various, the opposite of the expert, the critic, the academician. All those latter gentlemen seek answers. The artist seeks questions. This I learned from Malaquais,{{LJ:Malaquais}} who once said in a passion, “There are no answers. There are only questions.”) So, the academician is drawn to the subject which intrigues him least—in other words, he can read it the fastest because he finds it the least disturbing and stimulating. He takes less as he reads so he can read efficiently. Which is why editors often get little out of a book—they read too quickly. | ||
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[[Category:February 21, 1955]] | [[Category:February 21, 1955]] | ||