Austin Kleon

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The best distance learning is reading a book

With all the talk of educational technology in this era of social distancing, I am reminded of Neil Postman, who said, “The act of reading a book is the best example of ‘distance learning’ ever invented.”

He put it this way in Building a Bridge to the 18th Century:

To use the term “distance learning” to refer to students and a teacher sending e-mail messages to each other may have some value, but it obscures the fact that the act of reading a book is the best example of distance learning possible, for reading not only triumphs over the limitations of space and co-presence but of time as well.

Crack open a book and you can not only learn from someone who’s several thousand miles away, you can learn from someone who’s several thousand years away.

(And even though I love the convenience of my Kindle, I try not to forget that paper is a wonderful technology.)

How to read like Rossellini

José Guadalupe Posada

In the latest edition of his new newsletter, Subtle Maneuvers, Mason Currey details filmmaker Roberto Rossellini’s nighttime reading habit:

I don’t sleep much at night. I read in bed, always a number of books at the same time, often six or seven. I find it tiring to concentrate on a single book, to wait for the end… .

While reading, I have the courage to note on the books’ margin the ideas that come to me. Later, before shelving the books, I make up some bibliographic cards. I make signs with different colors so I know what’s most important, less important, what’s complementary, what’s basic, et cetera. And I also write down the thoughts that come to me, impressions absolutely virgin. I reread my notes on the books’ pages and I write them down in notebooks under headings divided by letters A, B, C, D. Then I write ‘human,’ ‘education,’ ‘thievery,’ et cetera. These cards, later on when I need them, will permit me to reconstruct a certain type of person.

The filmmaker claimed he annotated over 9000 books and that his nighttime reading — gathering “an extraordinary amount of information” — gave him the freedom to be improvisational on set during the day.

Rossellini practiced at least 3 of my favorite methods for turning reading into writing:

1. Promiscuous reading, or reading more than one book at a time.

2. Marginalia, or reading with a pencil.

3. Revisiting your notes and copying them for later use.

It occurs to me that I would read a whole Daily Rituals-style book called Reading Rituals, about how great minds read. (Then again, that’s probably what I’m doing with this reading category.)

How to turn your books into time capsules


Years ago I borrowed this copy of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler from my father-in-law, and when I opened it up I found Calvino’s 1985 NYTimes obit and stories from a 1983 Harper’s.

I was so surprised and delighted by these unexpected artifacts that I decided to start saving clippings in my own books. Here’s my copy of John Ashbery’s They Knew What They Wanted, in which I stuffed a NYTimes review and a photo of his collage desk.

Here’s my copy of Lonesome Dove with a July 2010 Texas Monthly map of the plot of the book and my copy of Salt Fat Acid Heat with Wendy’s piece about writers’ snacks, “The Raw and the Cooked,” from 2011:

Saving clippings this way turns each book into a time capsule. The next time I open one of these books, a paper treasure will fall out. A little surprise for my future self. (Or whoever else cracks it open.)

“Time capsules are notoriously disappointing,” writes Sam Anderson in Boom Town. “They are supposed to be magic existential wormholes to a lost reality, but instead they are almost always empty, damaged, full of junk — further depressing evidence (as if we needed any) of the absolute tyranny of time.”

These time capsules, however, have never disappointed me. They always delight.

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