The Collective Readership

We are already passed chapter 3 and I'm pushing through the stiff fourth chapter, but I wanted to revisit something from the end of chapter 3.

I was really interested by the idea that Ong brings up when talking about how reading differs from listening. Reading is not a collective activity and therefore it isolates. Listening, on the other hand, does just the opposite. An audience is brought together by a collective sound.

It is interesting how we talk about what books "say." Obviously books don't "say" anything. However, it seems as though we feel like we have to use this kind of personification, maybe to rationalize the fact that we spend hours upon hours gazing at pages covered in black ink.

The first thing I thought of was an issue I had during high school. For about two years when I read anything my 'inner voice' was the a British female. I don't know what the deal was, but please don't read too far into this -- I no longer have this issue. I generally blame it on NPR. Anyway, I thought this was interesting, because it was almost as if my mind was trying to take reading out of its literary context. In my mind there would be a British lady in a suit, behind a desk, reading the news except it was whatever was on the page in front of me.

Sadly I can't find any good visuals on Google images. sorry. blame google.