Lack of Reading Frustrates
By Claire Becker
Staff Writer

Does anybody ever stop doing homework at this school? I know that the answer to this question is "yes," and that Pomona College students are involved in many other activities. However, when asked if they read in their free time, students cite too much schoolwork as the primary reason they do not. Kassie Nigh '03, when asked if she did outside reading, replied, "Very rarely." Why? "I guess because I'm reading so much anyway."

Does it make sense to cease unassigned reading for four years, simply because we already read so much? Anne Gibson '03 argues that it does. She asserts that she "doesn't usually have time," and that "Rugby is my outside reading." I understand that there are many other great ways to spend one's time, but reading is one that should not be so easily dismissed.

I recently tried to talk about "The Ice Man," by Haruki Murakami (a fiction story from the February 10 issue of The New Yorker) with everyone I knew. This story is about a man who "isn't really made of ice," but "his body is as cold as ice." On a trip to the South Pole, his wife becomes pregnant with "a little ice man," and her past begins to disappear as she realizes she will never leave the South Pole.

Searching for someone with whom to discuss this strange and fascinating story, I discovered that no one had read it. This too is strange, because I see people carrying around The New Yorker, and lots of people claim to read it, but perhaps no one really does. There's a lot of great stuff out there each week, and it's slipping through your fingers into dark, unreachable piles on the floor.

I know your roommate wants your attention, just for attention's sake, but you've got to ignore her! And you've got to lie in your bed and read. I'm telling you, those are some of the best hours I spend here at Pomona.

I read an article in the February 3 issue of The New Yorker entitled "Swimming to Antarctica" that pulled me far from any thoughts of homework and simultaneously inspired me to work harder. Across the top of the first two pages of the article spreads a photograph of Lynne Cox, the author of the article, swimming in the Southern Ocean in Antarctica. The water she swims in is a dark, icy blue. In the distance loom icebergs and the strange, white mountains of Antarctica. The strangest thing about the photograph is Cox's skin. It's not blue or white like everything else in the scene; it's skin-colored. It's bright and human and tanned, and although all I can imagine when I read Cox's account of the swim is panic and breathing and pain, the photograph shows her face out of the water; she's taking a breath, and her arm reaches out in front of her, mid-stroke; she looks like any swimmer, even with all that ice behind her.

Cox tells the story of how she came to love swimming in the ocean. When she was fourteen she swam from Catalina Island twenty-seven miles to the mainland. After this she planned to swim the English Channel; in order to acclimate herself to the cold she began wearing light clothes year-round and sleeping with her windows open and without blankets. After waiting eleven years to get permission from the Soviet Union, she swam across the Bering Strait. She had completed all of her goals and needed a new one, so she decided to swim in Antarctica. The crazy part about this swim was that she wasn't swimming a channel; she had only a distance as her goal: one mile. Cox accomplished her goal, but not without considerable pain.

It's funny though, she swam a trial swim her first day in the thirty-two degree water that lasted twenty minutes. She felt, it seems, like she was going to die, and afterwards it took hours for her to get warm again. But the trial was worth it, since the next day, "although the water was a degree colder than it had been the day before, it actually felt warmer. (After the swim, I realized that nerve damage from the first swim had diminished my ability to perceive the cold)." Ha! Imagine that. Nerve damage saves the day.

The New Yorker does not only include articles that deal with cold and ice; in it one can also find pieces that inform our understanding of our current political situation, such as Nicholas Lemann's "After Iraq: The Plan to Remake the Middle East" (the February 17 & 24 issue). Our professors occasionally copy and distribute magazine articles for us to read, perhaps some of these very articles. But why would I wait for them to be handed to me?

I think it is time for us to read on our own initiative, not only because we'll learn more, but also because it can be really fun. So now will you read those magazines you carry around so stylishly, dear Reader? It's alright, you need not answer. I know you don't exist.