Periodically, someone on one of my on-line discussion groups argues that books are obsolete. If it's a literary website, the contributor replaces them with electronic devices like kindle. If it's a political site, the prediction is more sweeping; reading fiction itself is abandoned, replaced by a handy on-demand sort of television.

I had a tooth problem during most of December and January. An abscessed tooth, a course of antibiotics and lots of ibuprofen, the swelling went down, the pain diminished. The day after the antibiotics ended, the swelling and pain increased. This went on until a root canal last Tuesday. The only way I could deal with the pain was reading. I made a cave of my bed upstairs and under the covers re-read favorite books.  I'd gotten new books for Christmas but I didn't want to waste them on the tooth. I concentrated on series, multiple volumes with the same setting or people. I mentioned Modesitt in my last blog. He was read (and the blog was written) under the tyranny of the tooth. (I was probably a bit unfair to Modesitt's moral universe.)

I huddled under the covers, faithful little dogs acting as non-leaking hot water bottles, reading. If I woke up in the middle of the night, I'd take another ibuprofen and open my book. TV didn't work. Books did. I read non-fiction as well; it wasn't simply being lost in a story. I think it might have to do with the process of reading itself.

Reading, unlike television, theatre, movies, involves one sense: sight. There's not a split in focus between the senses. Perhaps the split between hearing and sight lessens the focus, allows the pain in. It's also solitary, no need to deal with others. (Having read books is very communal; my best friend in high school and I spent a lot of time discussing P.G. Wodehouse and Rex Stout. In elementary school, Connie and I loved horse and dog books. Currently, Chris and I pass on favorite genre stuff. Finding a new writer, especially one with a long back list, is a wondrous thing.) But the act of reading itself is something one does alone.

When I was young, I thought I'd find some great truth in some great book: something that would explain me, the universe and my place in it. (I suspect my husband felt the same way about math and physics at about the same age, around ten or so.) So I read anything and had a policy of reading books referred to in the books I read.

I was eleven or twelve when I read "A Good Man Is Hard To Find' by Flannery O'Connor. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and spent time in the summer with relatives in North Georgia. This was the first thing I ever read that used the language I heard and presented people like my relatives. It was an epiphany. People like me were appropriate subjects to be written about. The way we talked could, and should, be represented in fiction. I also remember thinking about families and how they stumble along, staying family, nothing dramatic ever happening but not working very well. I read Wise Blood after that and the sense of familiarity was re-inforced. We lived about a mile from Grant Park and the zoo in Atlanta. I could recognize some of the physical setting described in the book.

I'm sure I missed a lot in the book and the short story. If a re-read them as an adult, I think I'd still value them but I wouldn't have the same sense of a great revelation. That's something you can get only when you're young, new to books and reading.

Ten or fifteen years ago, I visited my daughter in Berkeley. We went to Oakland, to a newly refurbished Art Deco cinema that was showing Casablanca. I'd seen Casablanca half a dozen times on television, and it's one of my favorite movies. Demeter, Joaquin and I stood in line to get in  surrounded by people dressed in WWII uniforms and 1940's frocks.

We got in and the first scene of the movie opened. It was a revelation. In the dark, on the big screen, I saw the details of the bazaar. Viewing the movie in a cinema was a different experience. During the movie, at the famous set speeches, there was a chant from the audience.

"Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake."

"I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.

"Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By."

.....

"A Kiss is still a kiss,

A Sigh is just a sigh,

But When two lovers woo,

They still say I love you,

On that you can rely

As Time goes by.

All of the well known speeches were well known - and the audience recited them with the characters on screen. It didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the movie. It emphasized the communal nature of watching a movie in a dark cinema, surrounded by other people.

In the mid seventies, I was in Austin during a heat wave. My children were visiting their father in cool Alberta. The temperature was over a hundred, day and night. I spent the afternoons going to the Dobie, afternoon movies were $1. and I didn't care what was on. The Dobie was air conditioned. I saw Iphigenia there. An incredibly beautiful movie, very well done, in Greek with subtitles. The cinema was packed - other people escaping the heat.

The lights came up and it was totally silent. No one moved. I looked around, and was surrounded by 19, 20 year old young men, your basic late teen/adult males in the loutish developmental stage males appear to go through. They were crying.

I'd seen other art films with the same kind of audience. They frequently jeered and threw popcorn at the screen. Not this one. I think part of the difference was simply the newness of the story to them, the unfamiliar cast and characters. They were trapped in simply understanding what was going on and swept away.

My daughter gave me a video of the movie one Christmas. We watched it on the tv set and it was different experience. I was considerably less involved. The additional distance added in one way. At the end of the movie in the Dobie, I didn't realize the priests had cheated in sacrificing Iphigenia. At the end of the video, I realized the winds had begun before the sacrifice.

Same film: different reactions. That's true of books as well. Like the pages of a book, the images on a strip of film remain constant.

Unlike a book, the production and consumption of the movie are communal.

I've seen about half a dozen different theatrical productions of Cabaret. The text was the same; same speeches. Unlike a book, the productions were very different. A theatrical production is communal, a number of people get something on stage, but it is inherently unstable. Some nights, even with the same cast, are different than others. (There's a proverbial warning about going to plays: never go the second night. The cast is so excited to have gotten through opening night, there's a let down on the second night.)

Back to reading. Plays and movies require moving. You go out to experience them. TV, you sit at home, on the sofa. You don't have the same focus, active attention. Or perhaps that's just me. But one major difference between the two is that you need to learn to read. TV's easy. It's on, you watch whatever cartoons or children's shows are important when you're a toddler. Books, now, that’s very different.

Reading is a developmental skill. A child needs to be physically at a certain stage to read. Children who are read to are impatient to begin reading themselves. They learn to do it. They're excited when they manage to read the first book, first word, put all those squiggles together. An analogy: there's tying your own shoes and velcro closing. Anybody can slap velcro together, but tying a tidy bow that doesn't come undone is a big deal. Anyone can watch Thomas the Tank Engine. Reading the books, now, that's an achievement. You enjoy both but one involves pride, satisfaction, a feeling of independence. There's all those books out there and there's all kinds of valuable things to learn in them. You can do it by yourself, all you need is a library.

All in all, reading offers something different than viewing. It's a different kind of learning and a different kind of escape. So I don't think reading books (even if they're on hand held devices) will ever be obsolete.