Mordecai Richler and the dilemma of the voracious reader
“I was a voracious reader, but you would be mistaken if you took that as evidence of my quality.”
— Mordecai Richler
The phrase “voracious reader” can be a loaded one, often without meaning to be. It’s a phrase I’ve read many times in obituaries (a quality to describe how the deceased loved their books), and it’s probably a way I’ve described myself. “Avid reader” is more suitable, but I’ll cop to the V-word, too.
The quote above comes from Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler’s final novel, Barney’s Version, which focuses on an aging, cantankerous Montreal man (sound familiar?) who is turning his attention to his memoirs — even though his memory is failing him.
In the Richler universe, putting oneself down is not out of place at all, so Barney Panofsky’s self-deprecations are as expected as his moments of rage and frustration.
What to make of the “voracious reader” bit? It’s no surprise that Richler goes for the intersecting axes of quality and quantity — they’re hard to resist, and for people who dislike or even despise the phrase (yep, I’ve met them), they go hand in hand.
The thinking is this: if you read a lot, you’re not reading properly … and may not be thinking properly, either.
Consider this Substack post I came across. After describing a “friend” who is pushing himself to read 15 books a month to earn praise online, the author writes, “It’s bulimia, but for the brain. For the ‘voracious’ readers, it’s about quantity, not quality.”
Bulimia. Imagine equating someone who reads quite a bit with having a serious medical illness that threatens life and often kills.
The worst I can see from her description of her “friend” (I wonder how “he” felt when she wrote about “his” habits with such insight?) is that he felt stress to keep pace with a reading goal.
I have a target for myself on Goodreads of 120 books for this year, which is 10 books a month. It’s important to note that the majority of books I consume are audiobooks, and during the COVID-19 pandemic I got into the format in a serious way. If I’m out walking, taking the bus, doing laundry, washing up, whatever, I often have a book playing. I also find most narration speeds are too slow, and I can comprehend easily at a much faster speed. (My wife, Martha, can read print books quite a lot faster than I can. All of our brains are built differently.)
I still read some books slowly and more deeply; because of prompts to get particular books finished while they’re out from a library, it can take me months to finish a book I bought and am quite enjoying. Other times, if I’m not feeling the joy a particular book should spark, I’ll shelve it for a while, or return it to the library and try again some other time.
I’ve always been a heavy reader, I guess. Family stories include me reading the ingredient list on the corn flakes as a kid, just to fill that childhood urge to read something. I was a nerdy little boy, and — no kidding — would haul Dad’s Oxford Standard Dictionary down to just read.
The quality-over-quantity issue comes to mind from time to time, as my feeling is that it is not an either/or issue at all.
Why, after all, can you not have both?
My curiosity about reading has taken me all over the proverbial map of what libraries offer. I read literary fiction — which is almost always what critics of the word “voracious” mean when they say they prefer “quality” — as well as books about science, sports, pop culture, politics, health care … it’s a long list. Variety is not an accident: I really appreciate a compelling read, even if it is dark, but I’m inclined to switch gears and look for something very different in tone.
I honestly don’t care how many books people read. I take part in the annual Goodreads challenge for myself; each season, they offer a myriad of lists of books to explore, and I know for sure I’ve searched out books I would not otherwise have read.
By the way, there is one book I have to mark as read: Barney’s Version itself. I borrowed it a long time back, and did not complete it before the due date.
Let’s consider this an appropriate reading goal, then, for the rest of the year.