Granted, this is all theory. To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet subjected it to scientific rigor. But it is compelling nevertheless.
A couple of weeks ago, I read Scott McClellan's book What Happened for this column. Deadlines being what they are, I had to wolf down the last 200 pages in a single day. I chose an uncomfortable chair to minimize the danger of dozing off, and allowed myself only one Internet break. I would read this book. Nothing else. Just read.
It was difficult. I felt like I was getting away with something, like when you slip out of the office to catch a matinee. Indeed, I'd have felt less guilty sitting in a matinee. I had to keep reminding myself that this was OK, that, indeed, this was work.
It wasn't until somewhere around the third hour that I began to unclench, to stop feeling guilty for spending so much time focused on this one bit of matter plucked from a surging sea of knowledge. It felt ... liberating.
In an era in which everyone has a truth and the means to fling it around the world, an era in which knowledge is increasingly broad but seldom deep, maybe that's the ultimate act of sedition: to pick up a single book and read it.
The hours I spent reading Mr. McClellan's book felt like an escape, like I had stepped off a treadmill for the first time in years. The pages fell away and the hours got lost.
I don't know about you, but I could use more days like that.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for The Miami Herald. His column appears regularly in The Sun. His e-mail is lpitts@miamiherald.com.
