The Reader’s Health and the Ancient Maladies of Cure

Of late, one hears a peculiar phrase gaining currency: the health of study. That this health of reading is not identical with the health of the body is easy to perceive. Yet, just as we speak of mental health—something that blends with discernment and conscience—so too can we speak of this health of reading. What a man reads, the subjects upon which he practices the craft of language, these together constitute what may rightly be called the health of his study. In our present age, this health of the reading mind has, for some decades now, been afflicted by an incurable malady. Whenever I sit to study, or acquaint myself with the reading habits of others, I feel ever more acutely the sting of this sickness of the reader.
 
Generally, there are two kinds of illness that assail the health of reading. The first is the disease of reading the wrong things. The second, the disease of reading the right things yet failing to grasp them rightly—in short, the malady of misunderstanding. The greater part of the world’s readers today suffer from the first: the illness of consuming the wrong kind of literature. Be it poetry or prose, essay or editorial, newspaper or magazine, journal or textbook—each carries the germs of this sickness and infects the mind of the reader. A man today cannot even determine for himself what he shall read. Media barons, publishers, professional intellectuals dictate the menu. Journalists compose daily fictions, publishers flood the world with trite and putrid literature, historians write mythical histories, and intellectuals, sold to the state or to political parties, travel about as mouthpieces of various organizations. In this vicious circle, the reader alone is outcast—yet it is in his name that the entire enterprise is run. Falsehood, exaggeration, and fabrication have multiplied so much that the ordinary reader faces a bewildering trial each day: how shall he choose between truth and the semblance of truth? If five people describe the color white in five different ways—blue, red, yellow, pink, saffron—the damage is limited; confusion remains, but a residue of whiteness is still guessed at. But when all the foxes howl in one voice—when all declare that white is in fact red—the peril becomes mortal. People begin to think: perhaps white was never white, but always red. Thus do the lies of the state make their way into the bloodstream of the people.
 
In ancient times, before democracy spread its branches, the political order permitted only a single hue. In the land of the reds, only the reds prevailed; the blues were banished. In the land of the blues, only blues existed; reds became pariahs. This, one may identify as the arrangement of reading under dictatorship. Yet even here there lurked hypocrisies. Consider: one dictator, say Hitler, is proscribed in a land, while in that same land another dictator, say Stalin, has his portrait proudly hung upon public stages. Is this not a form of duplicity?
 
And what has happened today, in this so-called golden age of democracy? Almost anything can be written and published—a narrative, an event, an interpretation that contains within it some kernel of truth, yet which may be dyed in many colors and presented in infinite hues. This is a modern technique, through which the illusions and delusions of readers are made ever more dependent upon falsehood. The great disease of modern man is precisely this: the illness of reading too much, and reading in confusion. Through a thousand pipelines murky water is delivered to him, until he forgets altogether what clear water is. This is democracy’s deliberate imposition upon him—a labyrinth of endless opinions. And within this labyrinth the reader must search for the right door, a task more arduous than any ordinary soul can imagine. “Straight is the gate, and narrow the way, which leadeth unto life”—so says the New Testament. But the straight path is by no means so easily found. Which road is straight? Where does it lie? Who can truly tell? Philosophers, poets, writers, each holding a lantern, each claiming that their path is the straight and narrow, denounce all others as crooked. The reader in the midst of this cacophony becomes like some bewildered god caught in the ten wheels of fate—confounded, disoriented, almost damned. Perhaps never before in history has dictatorship placed such crushing pressure upon the reader’s intellect as democracy has now. Never before have men been so confused, so rudderless, as the modern reader in his hunt for truth.
 
For those who venture further, who pore into philosophy, the plight is still more pitiful. A philosopher often offers less of a pathway and more of a wilderness of confusion. Liberation through philosophy is denied; instead, readers slowly lose faith in their own reason. As they wander from one system to another, they discern a curious pattern: the younger philosopher refutes the massive brickwork of the elder, dismantling his edifice stone by stone. And yet, what does the younger build in its place? No new house, no new road—only the fragments of what he has just demolished, recycled and declared as new philosophy. Thus did the philosophers of the post-Renaissance world build entire careers, not by creating, but by negating their forebears. And the reader, seeking coherence, is driven mad by this endless demolition. Think of Bengal: without properly understanding Das Kapital, without fully knowing Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Bengal has celebrated twenty-five years of Marxism. And yet we continue, uncomprehending, half-deluded—but strangely content, perhaps content in our very misunderstanding.
 
Philosophy, however, is not literature. Readers of philosophy may drown in pedantry; literature’s readers, at least, are spared such scholarship. But if philosophy still keeps its feet upon the earth, literature has taken wing—its cow now climbing trees! The Harold Robbins of the twentieth century has metamorphosed into the Harry Potter of the twenty-first. The maiden of our ancient literature, once devoted in prayer to Lord Shiva for her beloved, no longer waits; a mere rub of finger to finger brings forth before her the most desired youth of her imagination. And critics call this the literature of wish-fulfillment, of entertainment. To this I recoil in horror—for such a claim heaps the burden of guilt upon the shoulders of the reader. The reader desires it, therefore we write thus. Think of the cruelty! First the reader’s mind is struck with blows so heavy that he reels into a labyrinth, and then, having looted his very intellect (and looting always requires payment, for every book must be bought), the very looters—those intellectual bandits—accuse the reader of being to blame. He wandered into a dark alley, they say, and therefore was robbed. “The reader demands it,” they insist, “and so we write fantasy.” But imagine if the state were to impose a moral censorship upon such dark alleys—these very same intellectuals would scream with righteous indignation: Democracy is dead!
 
Thus the modern reader lives as a democratic slave to his many-colored guides and guardians. Newspapers, textbooks, shallow books of study—these are his labyrinthine dwelling, his final address, if his intellect still remains intact. And once corrupted, no truly thoughtful book can move him. He cannot grasp truth unless it is spoon-fed with explanatory notes. The second disease, misinterpretation, always follows as the natural consequence of the first. Just as unchecked sugar corrodes the kidney, so too does long indulgence in bad reading corrode the power of right understanding.
 
Under dictatorship, the reader at least enjoyed one certainty: he knew that what he read had been revised, polished, and censored by the politburo. He could discern clearly how distortion had been introduced. His vision of the good may not have been clear, but his recognition of the false was sharp. In democracy, however, in the mill of endless contradictory arguments, good books and good writers—and above all, the very idea of the good—have perished. When evil is crowned with the name of good, good itself loses all worth in society. Evil becomes the norm, socially sanctioned. No wonder respect for writers has waned; readers now concern themselves only with colors and puzzles, with shadows and appearances. For the truly great writer, the worshipper of truth, the situation is dire. Unless he becomes the servant of a party, he has no survival. To find him is like searching for a needle in a thorn-thicket—who has the patience?
 
So, what then is the character of the modern reader? In this labyrinth of conflicting arguments, must the honest reader, the healthy student, resign himself to an asylum? Or will he, within the modern democracy, be reduced to a subject of failed ideals? I, for one, see no cure short of a great surgery. Yet even such surgery, in today’s democratic society, seems doubtful. All in all, there is little ground for hope in the cause of truth. This sickness of the reader, it seems, may well be eternal.