Unabashedly Bookish

[#1]

Books are a reliable connection to other minds.

When World War II hit London, Virginia Woolf isolated herself and read like mad.  She feared humanity was turning sour.  So she hunted for community in literature.  "Did I tell you I'm reading the whole of English literature through?" she wrote to her friend Ethel Smyth.  "By the time I've reached Shakespeare the bombs will be falling.  So I've arranged a very nice last scene: reading Shakespeare, having forgotten my gas mask, I shall fade away....  Thank God, as you would say, one's fathers left one a taste for reading!  ...I think [I have] only three months to read Ben Jonson, Milton, Donne, and all the rest!"  

In that letter, I see a woman knitting her role in human history.

Anyone who's comforted herself in sad times with books has had some sense of that: Good reading makes you feel connected.  In this sense, reading is a buffer against loneliness and even death.

I've been thinking of this recently because I'm doing a study in psychology that uses subliminal priming for death.  You can subliminally "prime" someone for thoughts of mortality by flashing the word "death" onto a computer screen so fast that he has no conscious recognition of it, but the word registers in the brain.  We know subliminal priming does register, because priming influences behavior.

In the study I'm doing, we subliminally prime half of our subjects for mortality.  We bring each subject (only one subject at a time) into a conference room, where she sees four empty chairs on one side of a table and just one chair on the other.  The subject is told to take a seat because other participants will soon be coming in to debate a topic with her. 

Those subjects who have been primed for death routinely choose the side of the table with four chairs, as opposed to the side with the lone chair.  Unprimed subjects don't show that tendency.  In other words, when we even unconsciously fear loss, we want--more than usual--to sit next to other people.  We want some affiliation, or the comfort of close voices.  With an increased sense of mortality, we want to bond with people, even people we don't fully know yet.

A book can provide that affiliation--an always-available community.  As Woolf showed when she read with fervor during war, a book resonates like a voice that speaks when you need it to.  With that in mind, it would be fun to do a psychology study in which we examined whether lifelong booklovers have some amped-up sense of mortality.  Bibliophiles might, at least, have distinct needs for a certain type of human affiliation.  After all, the type of "friendships" we build with books are not normal social connections.  They are imagined, and perhaps safer than other friendships are.

On a conscious level (after all, no one can describe an unconscious fear of isolation or death), how do books act as comforting friends to you?

---

see my website here

read my book here  

Message Edited by IlanaSimons on 07-02-2009 03:19 PM

[#2]

I see VW's thoughts in reading, not just as a buffer, but as a denial, through that buffer. Death is inevitable, life can be denied..  Writing the choice.  Always a life and death/ love hate relationship, I found her in.. To read, is to obliterate the consciousness of life....knowing your dreams give reality credence.

My one question, in this test...observation: As  I enter a room, seeing one chair on one side of the table, and four on the other...would be:  Why is that one chair alone, if this is a discussion?  Who sits alone?  Who particpates in a discussion when four chairs are lined up side by side?

I don't read to be given either mortality, or friendship...books can deceive, as well as human friendships.  I read for two reasons:  Knowlege of this problamatic situation, and to hear a voice that will give me hope that death is not inevitable.....

[#3]

Hi Kathy,

I do agree that in some way reading allows us to live in dreams rather than reality.

Thanks for asking for clarification of the study.  I was messy in my description, and the conference room is really set up as follows:

There's a big rectangular table.  At the head of it is a chair that's much bigger than the others, clearly the chair in which a moderator would sit.  Then on one of the long sides, there are four empty chairs.  On the other, there's just one empty chair.  It's as if these chairs were simply badly distributed.  The subject is asked to sit and wait for the other discussants to enter.

[#4]

Ilana,

Sorry, I was feeling terribly mortal last night when I answered.  I'm switching reading material today.  Although, your questions always make me think until I get a headache!  Not your fault.

I see the addition of the chair at the head of the table, that makes sense, now,  but I still wonder if anyone asks why there is only one chair on one side of the table, and four chairs lined up on the other side?  This visual doesn't seem random, or badly distributed, to me, it seems deliberate.  If it were two on one side, and three on the other, that would be random.  I'm thinking, if I were in a 'discussion', I would like to actually face the people I'm talking to, not sit beside them....which seems awkward.  I might be inclined to take the single chair.

If a patient is 'primed', does that take the questioning from their minds?   And do they simply sit down and not wonder, or ask? 

One last question.  A single word, "Death" submliminally enters the mind, you refer to it as "loss".  Do patients see that as their own mortality, or the mortality of others?  Does that make sense?...I mean, how do they know to apply that word to themselves, and not transfer that word to mean someone else?

Thanks,

Kathy

[#5]

Hello my book friends,

I'm still compulsively collecting books - at local thrift stores, yard sales, sometimes online sales and bookstore sales.  Of course, I can't resist the occasional full price book either.

My compulsion experienced a slight blip when a friendly man in his seventies I would guess, commented to me while I was checking out, " I realized I have more books at home than I could read before I die."  That did put things in a different perspective for me, and made me think my habit is probably a compulsion.  I certainly have many more books than I could read before I die. I smiled and told the man, "Me too, at least I'll have a good selection..." (Trying to justify?)

The man's comment may have primed me for mortality.  I actually love it when strangers say something that makes me stop in my tracks and take notice of life or death.

I definitely went home and started reading immediately.

tgem  

[#6]

Well, I dreamt about this subject...it seems, all night.  Maybe I was awake and didn't realize it?  Just thinking about it:  The idea of books all around us; either hiding behind them, or shielding us, indulging us....  Yes, again that community aspect as well, enters the equation.    I'll ask questions and get no answers, here, until it frustrates me to death!  Did I just prime myself? Ha!

Anyway, I've come to the conclusion I really hate blogs.  I hate blogging, if that's what I am doing -  Now, just as much or more than I hated them when they first were introduced as the bashedly bookish [blog] board. **BBBB** (Booklovers Beware of Babbling Brains)   Or PINNED:   the Perils In the Narcissists' Never Ending Demos.

Point being?  What drew me to them in the first place?   Informational, maybe?  What keeps me awake now is, why do I hate them?...other than conversations are little to nil?  I don't belong here, me thinks.  I think I'll open this soapbox up to the Community (not here):   "Why Blog?"

p.s.  And what does this have to do with this particular blog?  I'll never know, because I'm the one in the single chair talking to herself.!  Ha!

[#7]

Thanks for letting us know your opinion, Kathy. You should start a blog...

[#8]

Hotpen,

Thanks for your opinion, as well, but  I'm sorry you missed my point, completely.....

[#9]

Actually I'm afraid you missed mine.

[#10]

Thanks, Hotpen....Well, you made it obvious you don't care whether I understand what you're trying to say, or not......you've just made my point. about bloggers and blogging by certain participants - non sequitars  tell me nothing.

I don't appreciate sarcasm, if that was your intention, which is how I read it. 

[#11]

Kathy

I think it was meant as a compliment, more than a original suggestion. 

The problem it the internet is too fuzzy on subtleties. You see sarcasm, I read someone being coy.

[#12]

By TiggerBear

Kathy

I think it was meant as a compliment, more than a original suggestion. 

The problem it the internet is too fuzzy on subtleties. You see sarcasm, I read someone being coy.

***Yeah, but who knows?[raised eyebrows] Will this person give a reason, or explanation...again, who knows?  Some blogs that are dead ends, drive me nuts! [gritting teeth]  They float in the air like a cloud...you see them, but can't touch them with conversation.  Just short quippy replies.

 I don't just talk to hear myself talk. [laughing] I do take some of what I say seriously, [knitted brow] but  I think I made it obvious that I don't like blogging, in general.[scowl, trying to tie it into Ilana's posts]..

I want conversation [shaking head - nothing new] and for someone to say, "you should start a blog" [quoting Hotpen], is insulting to the meaning of what I was tring to say, getting in return a smart quip, typical blogging...makes no sense to me.  It was contradictory...  It felt like someone was saying, get a life, windbag!

Anyway, it's a non issue at this point, with little to no relevance to this subject of Ilana's, which I've totally veered from, and forgotten. [shaking head]  TiggerBear, see what your influence is on me!  You've got me doing it.... writing out my body language! LOL

[#13]

(deep rolling chuckle) I am not a virus.

I do agree though. Don't say something on a blog if you not willing to explain or going to continue. It's rude.

[#14]

A Fear of Death Can Boost Your Love for Reading

One last comment on this blog:  It's boosted my love for reading!

[#15]

 (Post not to be taken seriously. Not meant to be offensive. Not intended to raise even more doubts about my personality, but indicative of my happy if somewhat solitary nature.)

I would like to know what a "normal social connection" is. I know I might be considered abnormal because I spend a lot of time with my books (not normal friendship?) and because I have an imaginary friend named Dr. Carl Steinfeld, an outed "Inner Child" named Isabelle (a life size doll), and a travel companion (teddy bear) by the name of Tyana J LittleString. On top of that I spend hours "communicating" with invisible friends on the Barnes & Noble boards. Add to this all the characters in my head and you'll find me busy with my connections until the wee hours of the morning. Am I to understand that there is something missing in my life? Oh, you mean my friends and family and neighbors? Don't worry, they're all here. But most of them like to sleep at night and don't want to come out and play when I am most interested in discussions, around midnight.

Books and Internet and imaginary friends have no time table, no schedule, no priorities; they are available when needed. They don't even mind if I click my knitting needles while reading. And, by the way, if I had to pick a chair right now, I would take an end chair in the row of four. I think that is because I don't want to lead the conversation, be singled out, sit apart from others. But it also means that I like to have an easy exit. I lke the aisle seat on an airplane, but sit in the middle of a row in a movie theatre. Well, I'm good for two hours if I don't drink a soda.

As for death, am I subliminally primed? I think so. I had flashes of it last year. Flashes that made it clear that I might not be able to read that stack of books waiting for me on the lower shelf of my coffee table, on my desk, by the window. But reading was not on my mind. The doctors, the operating room, even the "state of affairs" at home were my primary concerns. Come to think of it, after our big earthquake in 1989 I didn't read either. I knitted. But hearing of other deaths makes me aware that "time is of the essence," makes me speed up reading temporarily.

People dying who are younger than I, like Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, like a friend in my writing group, make me want to do things NOW instead of putting them off.

One more thought: is a relationship with a pet a "normal social connection?" Yes, you can hug a pet; some pets sense your mood; pets are depending on you. But doesn't a "normal social connection" also involve intellectual interaction?  From previous experiences I would say that I'd probably chose a cat over a book as companion if I were near life's end. But I'd also say that this would be a selfish thing to do. Books are much more easily redistributed than a pet. It's the eyes that get to me. Those trusting cat eyes. And the paws that retract all claws as they stroke their velvety softness across my cheek.

[#16]

I want it to be noted that my previous post was conceived and executed at high noon, not during the "lonely hours of the night." While keying away I have listened to my resident mockinbird. He's been at it for the last two hours. He is young and still looking for a mate and though I have tried to explain to him that being alone is not so bad, he insists on letting the whole neighborhood hear his unending, constantly updated repertoire. I wonder what he defines as "normal social connections?"

[#17]

Sunltcloud,

Thank you for this gloriously unusual social connection.

I know some of us are better fed by imagined friendships than others are.  And, as you say, your friends, family, and neighbors are still in the mix. 

We do need real flesh and face and friends, or we go nuts.

see this heartfelt article on that topic.

now you're going to ask me what nuts is, and I do know nuts can be most fruitful, especially when we're talking half-nuts.

[#18]

Ilana,

It might surprise you, but I am quite familiar with "nuts." I just look in the mirror.

The article you linked to makes sense; solitary confinement and isolation do have consequences, and I know that children who grow up isolated have definite disadvantages in socializing.. But I still think that creative people with a lifetime of experiences behind them can afford to be hermits without withering away. There is a difference between forced isolation and the desire for solitude.

[#19]

Closure

I've thought seriously about this topic, which seems like a life time in the making, two years of going over it and over it in my mind, always the question, "how shall I die?"  It's unequivocally a death sentence I'd entered into. 

I've reached close to the end of the biography of VW.  Of course I know how it ends.  But in the last several weeks, I've wondered why her life had to end the way it did.  Why at this point in her life?  I do see why, now.  I've come as close to touching my death to her death, as I want to come.  I can only imagine what she'd gone through during those war years.  It makes me shudder.

These states of depressions, I've personally been in, have left me with such irrational thoughts.  The anger, the constant ups and downs, leaving me too weak to care one way of the other whether I lived or died.  I'd gotten to the point of not wanting to read, not wanting to do anything except contemplate death.

I've made attempts at sounding rational on these boards, but frustration always entered my mind.  Looking back over these two years, I saw things I would admit to, but could not change in myself, that is, until recently.  I was told I had the tools, but I refused to use them.  I couldn't fathom why I refused;  I couldn't fathom a tool I wasn't using.  What was I overlooking?   Common sense, while depressed, is not at your fingertips. 

The horrors of middle age, which I identified with the consequences of Virginia's menopausal conditions, dumped onto her already prone states of depression, hit me between the eyes.

Finally, one night, I couldn't stand the depression that hit me each time one of these hot flashes occurred.  It was the most irrational feeling I'd ever had in my life.  I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride, straight to hell.  I Googled alternative meds, and found that there really isn't anything to replace the hormones, for any length of time. 

I had two routine doctor's appointments in the last few weeks.  The first doctor couldn't give me anything concrete as a replacement.   He left it up to me to try what I wanted from a health food store.   

The second appointment, with my RNP, looked at my blood work, and asked me if I was drinking.  This was the awakening.  She asked me if I wanted to die, and gave me the alternative if I continued to drink.  Drinking had become a problem.  The more stress, the more you drink.  Rationally, of course I knew it compounds depression, but do you think I was thinking rationally at any point?  I told her how hard these depressions were hitting me, day and night, with no reprieve.  She called in a prescription for a SSRI.  I was finally honest with myself.

If anyone would have told me I needed these meds, I would have laughed at them.  I'm a strong willed person, and I'm knowledgeable on these things, but you can have all the knowledge in the world;  you can read every book on these subjects, but to the weakness I felt in having to take these meds,  was the most difficult place I found myself in. But I took the meds.  I knew in my heart I didn't want to die.  I trusted the judgement and knowledge of someone else.  That was the tool I couldn't find:  Trust.

I'm in a good place, now.  I feel fine.  No more depression.  No more compulsive, or obsessive thoughts....No more thoughts of wanting to take myself off of planet earth.  Each day I test my thoughts.  Hoping creativity isn't lost to these pills.  Time will tell.  Either way, I don't want to go back to the way it was.  I guess I am one of those who does have to find my own way, and walk down my own path, to find were I need to end up.

This is for anyone who finds themselves in this predicament, on this path of depression to nowhere - don't think twice about seeking help, it could save your life.

Thanks, Ilana, for allowing me to use your forum.

Kathy