Reading as "the search for a lost property"

The texts of writers regarded as successful, of writers who are widely read and widely understood, probably contain a good many tokens that are common to everyone. Behind the way texts that have earned the status of classics withstand time there is likewise a dimension of this kind. They contain plenty of half-tokens that complete one half of the tokens in everyone's mind or heart.

"The token dropping" is a somewhat slangy term. But it describes very well the forming of a certain spark of meaning. It is precisely an expression that makes the token drop; a token about meaning, about the miraculous experience of understanding. A token that instantly establishes our connection with the level of meaning we were looking for or found without looking.

Strangely, these tokens sometimes drop in the reader's head without the writer being aware of it. For that reason the connection between writer and reader is in a sense a matter of luck and destiny. Everyone takes something from the knowledge the writer puts forth in his text according to the size of his own vessel. However much the writer tells, everything he says runs up against the limits of the reader's understanding. However large the ocean, what you have in your hand is a glass, and you can take only that much.

It is reported that the Prophet ended his famous Farewell Sermon with these words: "Let those who are present tell those who are not present (or: let those who hear tell those who do not hear). Perhaps those who are not present will understand these words better."

For a moment remember and bear in mind that the people addressed by the Farewell Sermon were the Prophet's Companions. How accustomed are we to the possibility that any Muslim might understand one of the Prophet's sayings better than his Companions? Could such a thing be?

Let us not prolong it. Let us say that if the Prophet said it, it is true, and continue with our reflection on the wisdom of this blessed saying: the words delivered there, to the extent of their universality, have an effect that spreads from heart to heart. Some of those present there that day may not have had the problem to which those words pointed. The words recommending kindness to one's wives, or not practicing racism, or not consuming interest may have worked, for some of those Companions who had already passed through the Prophet's training, people who had already done what was to be done on this matter, only as a warning not to fall into the same error again. Yet these words may have a deeper effect on the heart of someone who will actually live this problem in the future and who may be addressed by these words.

There is an attraction between the word and the word's real recipient. This attraction sometimes manifests independently of the will of the writer or speaker. The word goes, somehow finds its real recipient, descends into his heart and shows its effect. For this reason one should not expect everyone always to understand the same thing from every reading. A person cannot find anything in a word that has no loss in respect of the meaning to which that word corresponds. A person cannot always be blamed, or accused of lack of understanding, because he cannot find something in a word. If he cannot find his "lost property" in that word, it is entirely normal that he feels no excitement and finds no meaning in it.

Everyone's lost property is not always in the same words. People's lost properties may be in very different words. The other half of the token whose one half is missing or lost in them may be in different words or books. Perhaps it is not necessary to read the same books to find this lost property. Books written for everyone, books everyone must read, books produced to be run in big print runs may not give most people an experience of "finding one's lost property." But they can probably, in spite of everything, give large masses a taste of acculturation. Even if it has a standardizing effect on people's literary tastes, dreams and longings, this too should not be belittled

In today's world, mass production and consumption indicate a level at which the word too has become a commodity. As the word is commodified, as it turns into a good that is bought and sold and therefore produced and consumed, people's relations with the word have undoubtedly begun to take on a new form.

In fact, as people living in Turkey, we perhaps do not have the luxury of saying a single word against any kind of reading of books. Because we already have a national problem of raising the culture of reading to a certain level.

However, within the scope of a general critique of the masses, one must not overlook the following fact. In an environment in which the writing and production of books is tending toward excess, it is supposed that people's only tie to knowledge is buying a book and reading it nicely. A rise in the level of book reading does not always mean that people form a very healthy bond with what they read. If we do not look at the knowledge in books as a "lost property," but on the contrary hope to increase our stocks of knowledge with it, to be stronger, to establish superiority over others, if we aim not to give ear to knowledge but to "possess" knowledge, the knowledge we "possess" becomes a tool at our command, in our charge, in our property.

Looking at knowledge this way, we also approach the books from which we will obtain knowledge in the light of the techniques that will provide it most productively and effectively. We develop speed-reading techniques and are drawn to the technologies of reading the most books in the least possible time. We hope that the books we read this way will make us strong against our rivals.

The large number of books we read by reading fast can cause an obesity of knowledge in us. We cannot digest so much knowledge. We lose the distinction between useless knowledge and useful knowledge. Since we no longer shrink from useless knowledge, we do not even feel the need to seek refuge in Allah. We do not even recognize the harm that will arise from useless knowledge. Where such harm comes from and how it comes, we seem to have lost the faculties to see it.