Reading between the train lines ... Photograph: David Levene
In an age of unstoppable communication - 24-hour news channels, mobile phone updates, unlimited broadband access - how and where are we supposed to read? Read a book, I mean, not stare at a screen or glance over the newspaper. The habits of reading that most of us grew up with have all but vanished from a generation at ease with receiving "information" in more technologically streamlined ways.
I grow more conscious with the passing years that my optimum reading context stubbornly refuses to change. I still want, Garbo-like, to be alone in a silent room, where no phone will ring, no person from Porlock will come to the door, no neighbours above will put on Snow Patrol at the first turn of the page. Since I live in Brighton, this is now a monstrously tall order.
It is a very long time since George Steiner, who has made a career of warning that the barbarians were at the gate, declared that the available opportunities for attentive, responsive reading were fast disappearing all over the Western world. Everywhere, there is the clatter of machinery, the incessant babble of voices, the worldwide thrum of amplified music. Squeezed into a student room as I read this, with Meatloaf screaming blue murder next door, one had to concede the old grouch had a point, in a world where games consoles and mobiles were then undreamed of.
We shouldn't get too precious about this, though. To claim that only total silence will do is to deny the compulsive magnetic pull of good writing. Most of us can read on long train journeys, despite the array of provocations (which now include television). When the newspaper is scanned and the crossword done, what else are you going to do en route from Euston to Manchester?
It is possible to become adept at tuning out a certain level of ambient noise. The couple in the seats behind have every right to talk to each other while you're pondering the unbearable lightness of being, and the children seated around the table opposite with their crayons and Monster Munch and Pepsi don't care that oranges are not the only fruit. Translate the scene to a setting where we have the right to expect quiet, and the occasional patter of a fly on the windowpane is infernal. How annoying is murmured conversation in a library reading room?
I have learned to tailor my reading to the circumstances. In situations where there will be distractions aplenty, narrative drive on the page is a valuable asset. A coach journey to the airport is not the best time for getting to grips with Heidegger. Reading in bed hasn't appealed since childhood, now that I only have to get into it when I'm sleepy.
But here's the most curious thing of all. I can't read in a room where just one other person is reading. It's almost as though, becoming aware of their absorption as I turn my own increasingly desultory pages, I find myself thinking that, all in all, I'd like to have whatever she's having.
