That slight tremor on August 15, 2013—which passed
without much notice in the rest of the world—was the earth shifting at The
Georgia Review. On that day we began accepting electronic submissions. On
August 18 an essay came in online that caught my eye. But after I read it a
couple times, I found myself making a few lukewarm notes in preparation for
moving it along to the next reader: “strong start, good closing, fuzzy in the
middle—an ambitious essay that lost its focus.” For some reason that I don’t
recall now, I decided to print the essay out and give it another try. You know
where this is going: I immediately understood what the author was up to and
loved the piece. It has been accepted for publication, and the whole incident
has given me pause to realize that I don’t think that I read as well—that is,
with the same level of perception—from a screen as I do from paper. Nothing
against my iPad, which I dearly love, or even the big old Dell on my desk, but
when I read at my job I’m evaluating the efforts of working writers, most of
whom care and grind and hope. I owe them the courtesy of my complete attention
and comprehension.
~
If you hold an opinion and look hard enough, you can
find a study to back it up. Sure enough, the International Journal of
Educational Research* reports a carefully constructed study of seventy-two
Norwegian tenth graders in which two comparable groups were tested after
reading either PDF or paper versions of texts running 1400-1600 words. Eight
pages of education-speak and statistics boil down to this: “The results of this
study indicate that reading linear narrative and expository text on a computer
screen leads to poorer reading comprehension than reading the same texts on
paper. . . . If texts are longer than a page, scrolling and the lack of
spatiotemporal markers of the digital texts to aid memory and reading
comprehension might impede reading performance.”
The study’s author, Anne Mangen, and her co-authors
point to navigation issues as the main contributor to their results. First,
scrolling “imposes a spatial instability which may negatively affect the
reader’s mental representation of the text”; second, on-screen reading
restricts a reader’s access to an entire text. “We know from empirical and
theoretical research that having a good spatial mental representation of the
physical layout of the text supports reading comprehension.” In summary, the authors
quote a 2006 Canadian study: “Difficulties in reading from computers may be due
to disrupted mental maps of the text, which may be reflected in poorer
understanding and ultimately poorer recall of presented material.”**
The more we learn about how our minds work, the more
we come to realize that separating the mind and body is an epistemological dead
end. As Nicholas Carr writes in the preview issue of Nautilus.*** “What we’re learning now is that reading is a
bodily activity. We take information the way we experience the world—as much
with our sense of touch as with our sense of sight. Some scientists believe
that our brain actually interprets written letters and words as physical
objects—a reflection of the fact that our minds evolved to perceive things, not
symbols.” By holding that now-accepted essay submission in my hands, I had
become completely engaged. I could quickly flip back and forth among the pages
to pick up images and threads of the argument. My “mind’s eye” helped me to
recall and reconstruct the “mental map” to the extent that even after I passed
the essay along I could tell you what was being discussed and where in the text
the discussion occurred. Instead of being left with a screen gone dark, I
retained a vital piece of writing.
~
This sudden immersion into reading and evaluating
manuscripts online has reinforced for me the importance of a framework—a mental
map—in shaping nonfiction into an essay. However, I don’t mean to imply here
that merely committing a piece of writing to paper rather than a computer
screen will automatically provide that necessary map; it has to be inherent in
the thought that precedes writing and as a constant presence throughout the
writing. Without an author’s help, a reader is left hiking a random path. The
details are still present—and they may be profound, dramatic, or beautiful—but
lacking context and commentary, they lack sense and purpose.
Keeping a reader on track might call for simply
providing ongoing and specific references to time and place; it will certainly
involve transitions. However, the most-often overlooked, and perhaps the most
important, addition to a writer’s map is a little more telling and a little
less showing. Not every aphorism is misleading. Some—Warren Zevon's "Enjoy
every sandwich" comes to mind—can be quite useful, even important. But
believing something just because it's repeated endlessly is a mistake. “Show,
don't tell" is one of those tidy saws that, although filled with good
intention, has replaced thought, and it has put authors in mortal fear of
straying, even briefly, from the concrete. But in an essay, a writer should be
pursuing an idea, as well as relating a story. It’s okay, even necessary, to
“tell”: to take some time to ruminate—generalize, synthesize, analyze—get
abstract for a moment, then return to the details.
Alfred Korszybski warned against confusing reality
with the definition of reality when he coined the often-used phrase, “the map
is not the territory.” But I would suggest that the structure and direction a
map provides are the tools that inform effective nonfiction: work that enables
true insight into reality rather than trying and failing at the task of
“writing” the reality itself. An essay’s mental map is not the territory, nor
should it attempt to be. Consider Borges’s brief story “On Exactitude in
Science,” which describes a country in which cartography had reached such
perfection that “the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size
was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.” That map,
of course, proved useless because it wasn’t a map at all. The nonfiction
equivalent, without forethought and design, without an internal structure, will
leave readers feeling that they’re scrolling down an endless page, looking in
vain for a cairn, a blaze on a tree.
* Mangen, Anne, et al. “Reading linear texts on
paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading
comprehension.” International Journal of Educational Research. 58 (2013): 61– 68. Web. 23 Sept. 2013.
** Kerr, M.A. and S.E. Symons. “Computerized
presentation of text: Effects on children's reading
of informational material.” Reading and Writing. 19.1 (2006): 1-19. Web. 17
Oct. 2013.
*** Carr, Nicholas. “Paper Versus Pixel. natil.us. 1 Aug. 2013. Web. 23 Sept. 2013.
****A previous version of this piece appeared in
Brevity, 18 January 2014 and yet another on The Georgia Review website.
*****Map image from simpleicon.com
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