The Good, Lonely Company of Books - Article Example

In the essay “The Lonely, Good Company of Books,” Richard Rodriguez deals with the different ways of reading and the different things it can bring to one’s life. He does not necessarily write this essay simply to drum into its reader the importance of reading, which has been done many times and in many different ways, but to explore how reading shaped and morphed his life, and use this exploration to examine how people go about reading and what reading can be more generally, and hopefully, to have the reader examine their relationship to reading.

“The Lonely, Good Company of Books” takes on almost a narrative format, outlining the different stages of his life in terms of what readings he did and how he interpreted readings. He starts by talking about his upbringing, about how his parents interacted with their reading and how that affected him. He said that his parents read nothing more substantive than a recipe or a pamphlet, and believed that reading should be kept to a bare minimum, only extract the important information you need and then stop (Rodriguez).

He then moves on to explain the next step in his relationship with reading, and the influences on it. One of the major influences with reading was his mother, as mentioned before. When Rodriguez wanted to be a writer, his mother advised him not to, saying that it would be a foolish financial decision (Rodriguez). But there were counter-influences going against the influence his parents put on him, like an Old Nun who encouraged him to read, telling him that through reading he could access new characters and experiences that he never would have been able to imagine or live himself.

This narrative framework, talking about his relationship with reading from a young age as well as the influences who affected his relationship with reading, helps force anyone who reads “The Lonely, Good Company of Books” to examine the own parallel happenings in their life. Everyone conceives of their own lives in a narrative form, understanding how they grew and developed over time, so Rodriguez, by outlining his parent’s influence, for instance, on his reading life, makes readers remember their parents or guardians and how those people influenced the reader’s own reading style.

Furthermore, it points out that reading is not a skill one acquires all at once, and one's relationship with reading is never the same. The narrative format of the essay helps demonstrate the way reading can both be shaped by one’s life, but also shape it. This essay’s narrative structure is an excellent tool for getting its reader to question and analyze their own relationship to reading, but this was not the only reason Richard Rodriguez wrote it. He also wanted to examine the many different kinds of relationships of reading there are in the world and assign some value to them.

He talks about how when he was a burgeoning reader he was never able to maintain a sense of self when reading, he always tended to adopt the writer's point of view rather than create his own. This robbed him of much of the beauty of reading, for one of the biggest and most amazing things about reading is the fact that an old story, essay or book can continually get reinterpreted, that the reader can add as much to it as the writer did. Furthermore, Rodriguez did not see reading as an end unto itself, but rather as a means to an end.

He read originally to improve his own academic standing, to make his essay writing skills stronger. In other words, he read to improve his own financial and personal situation without necessarily engaging with the material the way a critical reader should; he read with an eye on acquiring skills rather than understanding. Rodriguez describes the way he read in those times in negative terms, showing that he did not believe that the way he was reading was how one should be reading. This encourages his readers to take into consideration the ways they read – are they able to engage with the author while maintaining themselves, or do they lose themselves in the author?

Do they read for engagement, or for some other purpose? And if the answer to these questions is not what the reader thinks it should be, it encourages them to change their reading practices.