Reading for Socializing
Dear Reader,
I’m about to paraphrase someone here, so apologies for its lack of precision. It was one of those things you read that doesn’t quite leave your head.
A month back or so, philosopher Agnes Callard wrote that she saw people’s claim that introverts like public speaking because they are alone on the stage, and then she raised them that extroverts like reading because it’s a form of socializing. I don’t personally get too into the extroversion and introversion definition and worriment aside from being universally opposed to the neologism “ambivert,” which… WHY?
But Callard’s statement is interesting. Do people read because it’s a social act? And if so, what does that look like? Bookworms in particular try to classify every enthusiastic reader as an introvert, but Callard sees another possibility for voracious reading. (Obviously, any amount of reading, but voracious reading is the one particularly ascribed to introverts.) So, is reading a part of socializing?
Now, of course, I’m not, as usual, talking about what I call the CEO or Ivy League read. That fun’s for yet another day. This isn’t about listing the bullet points of Thomas Friedman’s latest defeasible dumpfest, as much joy as such posers bring to the party.
Rather, reading for socializing is kind of like reading for others, except that it’s intended as reading that you can either share with others or compare with others. “Sharing and comparing” sounds kind of gross, though, so you can use different words if you prefer.
In the sense of sharing, you’ve read something that you can now bring into conversation with others. It’s like reading for others in the sense that you aren’t reading it in order prove how smart you are. That is, you aren’t reading in order to be a human index or Google or to win a conversational trivia competition (though reading for trivia night would admittedly be its own form of reading for socializing). You are reading so that you’ll have something to talk about. The ideas sort of bubble out.
This obviously starts to get outside reading territory and into exploration of human interaction; but I’ll simply mention that, while this can fall into the territory of word vomit or oversharing, the eagerly shared story or information won’t typically be in excess. It’s a conversation bit, an allusion perhaps, but not a monologue.
Comparing could fall into a book club setting, certainly. I’ll leave that sub-category for its own day, as book clubs are rather popular. And I’m not talking about reading for a class discussion, of course. That’s also its own thing.
Comparing often happens between friends. I find there’s typically an asymmetry in when the work is read. It’s not too often that friends are starting and stopping a book at the exact same time, and even less so for an article or short story. So the read will get recommended from one person to the other, often for the purpose of comparison (or discussion). But once both (or all) parties have finished the read, conversation abounds.
Comparing can also be found within re-reads. Harry Potter fans love to re-read and burble over some line or moment—they can’t help themselves. The “Oh my word, do you remember this part?!” or “This line” allow for great conversation, and not just from Harry Potter (indeed, great lines would likely be from other works).
So what do you think? I left this piece more open to possibility than some, not least because it’s not my own concept. Still, what’s the point of reconsidering reading if it’s restricted to those ideas I’ve had opportunity to sift through myself? Maybe reading can be for the extroverts, and even a vehicle for socializing. (I’m not talking about the coffee-shop interrupter here. That person is the worst 99% of the time, and that is most unwanted socializing.)
Reading as a social act, though—who’d have thought?
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh
P.S. If you’d like some fun reading for conversation (or you happen to be a younger reader needing an easy intro to scientific journal writing…), here are some neurobiologists helping the psychologists out with their mistaken imagery, “Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside.” By way of personal testimony, I sat through no fewer than three presentations from licensed psychologists this past year who were really excited to tell us attendees about our lizard brains. In fact, half of one of the presentations was predicated on this idea. That this is a common misunderstanding among psychologists is unfortunately real and influential. It’s almost as if claims from psychology are defeasible in nature.