Reading in a post-fact age

Along with the other disturbing attributes associated with Donald Trump--ignorance, corruption, boorish behavior,and general incompetence--there is his lack of interiority, a point made by Christine Smallwood in an article on the future of serious reading, in a time when the U.S. President does not read, reflect,listen well or care about truth.  He is lazy.

The essay is in the current HARPER's magazine, and asks the key question, "Does reading matter in a post-fact age, when smartphones and social media also distract us from interiority?"

Smallwood quotes near the end a statement of major importance by novelist Don DeLillo:  "If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean what we're talking about when we use the word "identity' has reached an end.  Privacy,  personhood, reading, and thinking are all wrapped up together."

I am applying this insight to my much-delayed reading of a classic English novel from 1953, THE GO-BETWEEN by L. P. Hartley, a beautifully evocative memory piece about an adolescent boy's innocence shattered during a summer in 1980.  In such fiction, we can come closer to another consciousness, and to our own, than in most other ways.

The novel was made into a film in 1973--hard to find but which I located from Korea via Amazon. It stars Alan Bates and Julie Christie, with an imperfect but intelligent screenplay by Harold Pinter, who doesn't make the central (older) narrator clear.  But seeing it lead me quickly back to reading the much more satisfying novel, which I highly recommend--and not merely as an escape from difficult times.   It sums up the essence of DeLillo's excellent point.