John Miedema

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A familiar quote by the philosopher, Bacon, also used the metaphor of book-eating in reference to slow reading:

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention (2001).

The earliest explicit reference to the phrase “slow reading” appears to be in Nietzsche preface to Daybreak: “It is not for nothing that one has been a philologist, perhaps one is a philologist still, that it to say, a teacher of slow reading” (1997, 5). Nietzsche viewed philology as a “connoisseurship of the word” (5) requiring the reader to take the time to read well.

There is clear overlap between religious and philosophical treatments of slow reading. Quite often, religious scholars refer to existential philosophers, especially Heidegger. Pike (2004) noted Heidegger’s view that “the literary work of art requires that we bring all of ourselves, our spiritual and moral faculties included, to the reading event” (161) and recommended it for studying biblical passages. Others draw lines between religious and philosophical knowledge, e.g., Smith (2004) discussed the limitations of aesthetic reading in spiritual development.

The practice of slow reading may not have any religious subtext. Hartman (1980) is a well-known advocate of slow reading, or ‘close reading’ as it is often called in philosophical and literary contexts. For Hartman, close reading is a technique that cuts through ideology. He quoted Ruskin, “if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter – that is to say, with real accuracy – you are forevermore in some measure an educated person” (173).

References

Bacon, Francis (2001). Essays, Civil and Moral. Vol. III, Part 1. The Harvard Classics. NY: P.F. Collier & Son.

Hartman, Geoffrey (1980). The Work of Reading. Chapter in Criticism in the Wilderness. New Haven : Yale University Press.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1997). Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Maudemarie Clark (editor), R.J. Hollingdale (translator). NY: Cambridge University Press.

Pike, Mark A. (2004). ‘Well-being’ through reading: Drawing upon literature and literacy in spiritual education. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 9(2), 155-162.

Smith, David I. (2004). The poet, the child and the blackbird: Aesthetic reading and spiritual development. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 9(2), 143-154.