{"id":360,"date":"2018-10-29T22:28:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T02:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/?p=360"},"modified":"2018-10-29T22:28:46","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T02:28:46","slug":"how-fast-could-c-s-lewis-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/2018\/10\/29\/how-fast-could-c-s-lewis-read\/","title":{"rendered":"How fast could C.S. Lewis read?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by<\/span>\u00a0Kevin McCall<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It is well known that C.S. Lewis was an extremely fast reader.\u00a0\u00a0Richard Ladborough, in his essay \u201cIn Cambridge\u201d in the bookC.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table<\/em>\u00a0writes: \u201cIt is now common knowledge that his [Lewis\u2019s] memory was prodigious and that he seemed to have read everything.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0In his essay \u201cJack on Holiday\u201d in the same book, George Sayer says, \u201cBut when the coffee or tea had been cleared away (I think he preferred tea), he liked to settle down to an hour or two of silent reading.\u00a0\u00a0He would choose a book from my shelves, usually a novel, and often one that he had read before, for he held the view that the qualities of a good book could not be appreciated at the first reading.\u00a0\u00a0\u2026 He read very fast and if the book were a humorous one (he pronounced that word with an\u00a0h<\/em>) often chucked or laughed aloud.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0In his essay \u201cC.S. Lewis: Supervisor\u201d collected in\u00a0C.S. Lewis Remembered<\/em>, Alastair Fowler compares his own reading to Lewis\u2019s: \u201cReading habits, of course, were different in the fifties; I used then to read ten hours a day.\u00a0\u00a0Lewis, who read far faster, read with surer grasp, and read whatever commitments allowed \u2013 read even at mealtimes \u2013 read prodigiously.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Lewis also completed an English degree at Oxford (with First Class Honours) within one year rather than the typical three years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not only was Lewis a fast reader, he also had an extraordinary memory for the details of what he had read.\u00a0\u00a0Douglas Gresham writes in his foreward to\u00a0A Grief Observed\u00a0<\/em>\u201cHelen Joy Gresham (n\u00e9e Davidman), the \u2018H.\u2019 referred to in this book, was perhaps the only woman whom Jack ever met who was his intellectual equal and also as well-read and widely educated as he was himself.\u00a0\u00a0They shared another common factor: they were both possessed of total recall.\u00a0\u00a0Jack never forgot anything he had read, and neither did she.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Alastair Fowler also recalls Lewis\u2019s powerful memory: \u201cThe flow of Lewis\u2019s writing and speaking had much to do with this remarkable memory.\u00a0\u00a0Memory \"\"<\/a>feats were common enough in Oxford then, especially among classicists.\u00a0\u00a0Edgar Lobel the papyrologist and fungiphage, to mention one, modestly denied having Homer by heart \u2013 but added, \u2018Mind you, if you said a verse I dare say I could give you the next one.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0Lewis could have claimed much the same of\u00a0Paradise Lost<\/em><\/a>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is natural to ask, how fast could Lewis read?\u00a0\u00a0Also, how did Lewis read?\u00a0\u00a0Was he an efficient skimmer who knew which words to skip or did he have some nearly superhuman ability to take in huge volumes of text?\u00a0\u00a0A letter written to C.S. Lewis\u2019s brother Warren Lewis on May 10, 1921 provides a way to calculate Lewis\u2019s reading speed.\u00a0 Here is the relevant passage: \u201cWhich reminds me, did you ever read Daudet\u2019s \u2018L\u2019Immortel\u2019? It is a novel about the Academie Francaise: if you like sheer cool premeditated insolence you should order this by the next mail \u2013 tho\u2019 perhaps I should warn you that it is only a couple of hours reading, and you may like books that last, on the world\u2019s end.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Copying the Project Gutenberg English translation of\u00a0L\u2019Immortel<\/em>\u00a0into a word document shows that the book contains 69,265 words.\u00a0\u00a0Rounding to 70,000 and dividing by 120 minutes indicates that Lewis read 583 1\/3 words per minute (Wpm).\u00a0\u00a0If we assume a single-spaced page is approximately 500 words, Lewis could read 70 pages per hour.\u00a0\u00a0(Though if Lewis was reading the book in French, his English reading speed is likely faster).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ronald Carver\u2019s 1985 paper in\u00a0Reading Research Quarterly<\/em>, \u201cHow good are some of the world\u2019s best readers?\u201d provides some clues to answer the second question.\u00a0\u00a0Carver selected 16 readers on the basis of their excellent reading ability: four college students who made high scores on a test of vocabulary and reading comprehension, four accomplished speed readers, four professionals whose jobs required large amounts of reading (\u201ca writer for the\u00a0New Yorker\u00a0<\/em>magazine,\u201d \u201ca copy editor for a major metropolitan newspaper who had been recommended by managing editor as one of the best of the 12 copy editors they employed,\u201d \u201cthe former head of a major medical school who had served as editor of a nationally known medical journal,\u201d \u201ca history professor at a major university who also wrote book reviews for newspapers\u201d), and four people who had achieved very high scores on various tests (a member of Mensa who had been successful on the same tests given to the college students, a perfect scorer on the SAT, a perfect scorer on the GRE, and a test taker who had scored above 700 on the GMAT).\u00a0\u00a0Carver gave tests of reading comprehension, vocabulary, and intelligence (Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices).\u00a0\u00a0Most importantly, Carver tested subjects\u2019 ability to write summaries of various 6,000 word passages and to recall important details from these same passages when given time to read the passage corresponding to reading speeds of 24,000 Wpm, 6,000 Wpm, 1,500 Wpm, and 375 Wpm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Carver found that while many of the research participants could write good summaries while only spending a short amount of time with the passages, their ability to recall details fell precipitously as time given to read passages decreased.\u00a0\u00a0He concluded that none of the readers showed the ability to recall and comprehend details taken from the entire passage above while reading at speeds above 300-600 Wpm.\u00a0\u00a0Beyond 600 Wpm, the speed readers were really skimming, not reading.\u00a0\u00a0Carver describes reading and skimming as follows: \u201cWhat is ordinarily called\u00a0reading<\/em>\u00a0involves an attempt to comprehend the thoughts the author intended to communicate on a sentence-by-sentence basis \u2026 When skimming, the individual does not attempt to comprehend the complete thought expressed in each sentence.\u00a0\u00a0Instead, the individual is simply trying to extract as much general information as possible about the passage by sampling only isolated words and phrases.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

C.S. Lewis\u2019s calculated reading speed of 583 1\/3 Wpm is at the very top of the range described by Carver, suggesting that Lewis really was reading rather than skimming.\u00a0\u00a0Lewis\u2019s ability to recall details with great accuracy provides further support for this view.\u00a0\u00a0In addition to Lewis\u2019s rapid reading and excellent memory, he also had profound insight into what he had read and skill in describing it.\u00a0Alastair Fowler wrote: \u201cFor he talked like an angel.\u00a0\u00a0My idea of how angels might talk derives from Lewis.\u00a0\u00a0His prose is brilliant, amusing, intimate, cogent; but his talk was of a superior order.\u00a0\u00a0It combined fluent, informal progression with the most articulate syntax, as if, somehow, it was a text\u00a0remembered<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 and remembered perfectly\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Since Carver only tested 16 people, it is certainly possible that an extraordinary reader slipped through his selection process.\u00a0Among individual readers, the best overall performance was achieved perfect scorer on the GRE, called TEST-GRE by Carver.\u00a0\u00a0Carver writes, \u201cOf the 16 superior readers tested, TEST-GRE seems easily to qualify as the best reader in terms of being able to comprehend the most while reading the fastest.\u00a0\u00a0There is evidence that she or he could read eighth-grade material at around 500 Wpm.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0But, TEST-GRE was randomly selected from among over 200,000 people who had made a perfect score within recent years, so this person could just as easily not have been selected.\u00a0\u00a0Similarly, there could have been an even better reader with a perfect score on the GRE who was not selected.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Carver also makes an interesting comment on the fourth best overall scorer, a speed reader selected on the basis of a reported ability to read 81,000 words per minute, \u201cFrom the Raven Test, and from the scores on the two book tests at 1,500 Wpm, it appears that SPEED-81,000 is an exceptionally intelligent person who ordinarily skims at very fast rates.\u00a0\u00a0However, there were no data which replicated the 81,000 Wpm reported when she or he completed the speed-reading course given by the Reading Foundation of California.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Can we find an upper bound on claims of extremely fast reading?\u00a0\u00a0In fact, the well-known savant\u00a0Kim Peek<\/a>\u00a0provides such an upper bound.\u00a0\u00a0Peek was able to read two pages of a book in 8-10 seconds (one with each eye) and recall every word he had read with nearly perfect accuracy.\u00a0\u00a0Peek could thus read 12 pages every minute, which works out to 720 pages per hour, and assuming again that a single-spaced page is approximately 500 words implies that Kim Peek could read 360,000 words per minute.\u00a0\u00a0However, Peek was not actually reading.\u00a0\u00a0He was not comprehending the thoughts expressed on each page but memorizing the text contained in the book.\u00a0\u00a0He would have scored almost perfectly on Carver\u2019s tests of detail recall but would not have been able to write a good summary.\u00a0\u00a0Peek\u2019s reading speed provides reason to be skeptical of claims to read above 720 pages per hour.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Kevin McCall It is well known that C.S. Lewis was an extremely fast reader.\u00a0\u00a0Richard Ladborough, in his essay \u201cIn Cambridge\u201d in the bookC.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table\u00a0writes: \u201cIt is now common knowledge that his [Lewis\u2019s] memory was prodigious and that he seemed to have read everything.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0In his essay \u201cJack on Holiday\u201d in the same…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[14,77],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lewis","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-kevin-mccall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":365,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}