{"id":824,"date":"2008-08-12T10:58:26","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T17:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/08\/the-dark-side-of-books\/"},"modified":"2008-08-12T11:08:11","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T18:08:11","slug":"the-dark-side-of-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/08\/12\/the-dark-side-of-books\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Side of Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the The Times South Africa<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n
Henrietta Rose-Innes on the dark side of books<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Writers on reading<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading is, of course, a good and precious thing, and my career \u2014 and the existence of this column \u2014 is based on the understanding that people love to read, need to read, should, indeed, be reading more.<\/p>\n

<\/a>But literacy has a dark side too, doesn\u2019t it? Bookish people drolly claim to be addicted. I think, in some cases, this is literally true. I\u2019d like to know the brain chemistry involved \u2014 what pleasure centres ignite when you part the pages of a new book and sniff the ink. It seems those neural pathways are laid down young: you\u2019re hooked early or not at all. And from that point on, you need to keep feeding the habit with progressively larger doses of word, no matter how cut and contaminated.<\/p>\n

Highs and lows, altered states… in my life, books have often played a pharmaceutical role, either sedative or stimulant. I\u2019ve read to forget, as well as to remember. Worse: hardcore, compulsive reading can sometimes feel like secret drinking or binge eating, like going on a bender. I can\u2019t say I\u2019ve ever had a crack cocaine book experience \u2014 although a couple of authors come quite close \u2014 but I\u2019ve sure read Valium. And who among the readers of these pages hasn\u2019t had a literature jones? Fortunately, it\u2019s a benevolent dependency, most of the time. Expensive, though. (The library fines alone can drive a woman to crime.) And sometimes, you just want to go clean.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I suppose this makes me a small-time pusher, holding a couple of capsules of a novel compound, looking for vulnerable readers for whom it might turn out to be habit-forming. There\u2019s enough of them. When I walk into a bookshop \u2014 one of the big ones, a vast dispensary stacked with complex uppers and downers \u2014 I can\u2019t help thinking, my God, what army of junkies is all this feeding?<\/p>\n

So when someone asks what the purpose of literature is, as people occasionally do, I can\u2019t give a very high- minded answer. It feels physiological. I read to self-medicate. And because I get antsy if I can\u2019t and because, well, it\u2019s a trip. Which is as good a way as any of describing the transports of a really good book.<\/p>\n

Henrietta Rose-Innes is the author of Shark\u2019s Egg and The Rock Alphabet. Her short story Poison won this year\u2019s Caine Prize for African Writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

click to listen to this interview<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[ click to read interview at The Times South Africa<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the The Times South Africa Henrietta Rose-Innes on the dark side of books Writers on reading Reading is, of course, a good and precious thing, and my career \u2014 and the existence of this column \u2014 is based on the understanding that people love to read, need to read, should, indeed, be reading more. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}