Don't forget the power of the printed page

Here's a thought about something you can do more of in 2011. Read.

Yes, I very well know that hearing an editor urge you to read is like hearing a dairy farmer urge you to drink milk or a gymnasium owner urge you to exercise. I have a vested interest in the activity. But I also know what a pleasure it is.

These days, reading is thought to be a dying pursuit. Television, movies, streaming video and other attractions on the World Wide Web have captivated our imaginations and our intellects. We do not, in a phrase growing tiresome after decades of handy application, have time.

And, I will not criticize these other activities. As I was growing up watching whatever faddish trend the three available television channels foisted upon us from year to year, television was, often accurately, demeaned as the “boob tube.” But now with hundreds of channels providing depth on every interest and a degree of quality on the high end that the medium has never matched, the problem with television is not that there's not enough true literature to watch but that there's too much.

Likewise, contemporary movies — although certainly awash in drivel and mediocrity — are, in the hands of today's best directors and actors, more passionate, intriguing and demanding than ever. To turn a popular phrase on its head, when they are bad — like so many other things — they are very, very bad, but when they are good, they are amazing.

The Web too is rapidly maturing, and as much as it may be rightly criticized as short-attention-span theater, it also is so rife with inspiration, information and ideas that it's easy to understand why people spend so much time there. Indeed, it may be said, given the rise of Facebook, blogs, e-mail, Twitter, instant messaging, Internet chatting and a range of electronic communication tools almost too dizzying to comprehend, that Americans are doing more writing and reading today than they have ever done.

So, I welcome you to all these media. Each has its unique power, its own inherent advantages. And reading does, too.

One of my favorite “Twilight Zone” episodes — yes, even the boob tube era produced its literary gems — told the postapocalyptic story of a bank clerk who chanced to get locked into a vault during the nuclear holocaust. When he emerged to find a world void of people, he wandered into a library and there exulted over the treasures he knew would stave off his loneliness for the rest of his life (until his glasses broke, of course, and Rod Serling sidled up). The printed page has a subtle strength, and whether you turn to it for information, inspiration or just to pass the time, it can engage your mind and move your soul like nothing else. It can sustain you through long winter afternoons at home or a short wait at the doctor's office, and, as with that bespectacled clerk, crying madly, “Oh no! Oh no!” at his cruel misfortune, can feel almost tragic when it's gone.

And, yes, the problem with books and newspapers today isn't that they offer too little, but that they swell with so much. If I ever shy away from a newspaper, it is not because I think it will have nothing to interest me, but because I know that once I start wandering through all of its diverse attractions — its discoveries, its commentaries, its portraits of interesting people, its reflections of the community around me, its abundance of information on food, home, sport and art, including, of course, television, movies and the Internet — I find I can never put it down.

Don't forget that rare joy in 2011. Work newspapers and books into your daily life. Oh, and, certainly, drink plenty of milk and get your exercise. You'll have a better year.