Some say reading is an escape, a way to forget the weight of the world and our share of the burden. Does that truly capture the essence of reading? A perfect sentence or line of poetry can transport us but is that really an escape?

Memorable things said in beautiful ways awaken our senses like shooting stars on a clear night, sweet passages of music, first sight of a loved one after a long absence. Readers experience genuine physical sensations; a shiver, a flood of warmth, rising hair on the nape of the neck. Flaubert called these moments of perfection “Le mot juste.” Twain said something similar: the difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. This can also happen in reverse. Proust attributed the burst of creativity that produced “Remembrance of Things Past” to the taste and smell of pastry he remembered from childhood.

Aristotle pondered the effect of drama on the mind, particularly the tragic form. He suggested that witnessing the suffering of fictional characters on stage evokes real pity and fear in the minds of the audience. Those feelings trigger a catharsis. Viewers confront and process those complex emotions without actually facing the danger of tragic events. A little like a roller coaster that plunges harnessed riders down huge hills at high speed, terrified but safe. A purge takes place and the audience walks away from the theater relieved, balanced and with better understanding of human nature and themselves.

In Reader Come Home, Maryanne Wolf describes the biology of these processes. She writes about the “deep reading circuit” of the brain where insight and empathy can be aroused by words on a page. The same cells that react to actual experience are fired by fictional portrayals of events. Reading creates an intersection between imagination and reality where the unreal literally touches us. Watching actors enact fictional events seems to enhance the effect, maybe thanks to the addition of a higher degree of reality.

It’s safe to say that reading can easily provide more discovery and exploration than escape. We may open a book to light out for the territory but we find people and places that can change how we perceive life, the universe and
everything. And sometimes along the way we meet the better angels of our nature and close the book as better people.

*Quote from: Stevens, Wallace. “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” The Man With the Blue Guitar and Other Poems, Knopf, 1937.