Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Reading requires a degree of comfort. The more comfortable we are, the more likely we will experience that lovely gentle buzz or humming sensation, recognizable to us at different times as satisfaction, ease, and sometimes even wonder. Beyond the problems of distraction, it's probably the reason "Listen with Mother," a 1950s British Radio program for children, opened with the question that appears in my title above.

Our need for ease while reading might also account for common practices like reading at bedtime—a habit that usually begins in childhood. Getting comfortable with a good book makes sense. But why?

I'm a literary critic and theorist exploring how stories capture our interest and become enjoyable. That's why this article is subtitled "writing tips from the other side." As an expert critical reader of narratives, I'm keen to use my knowledge to improve my writing, help others understand their writing strategies, and identify ways of developing engaging works of fiction and nonfiction. Most of all, I want to provide these insights in an accessible and thought-provoking way—in bite-sized chunks.

So, what is it that keeps us turning those pages? Well, it's not one thing, but many. In this short article, I want to lay the groundwork for a series of essays on writing by talking about the positive experience of reading a good book. To begin with, I'm going to presume that the reading matter is enjoyable. I won't be considering what distracts or annoys the reader.

I describe myself as a literary theorist, but I don't mean that I am the inventor of theories. I mean that I'm someone who gathers together a range of approaches and ideas and tries to fit these together in a useful way. In this instance, my research draws on several sources—but chiefly the work of cognitive psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett, literary theorist and critic Paul B. Armstrong, and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio.

When I began exploring this topic, I wanted to understand why reading can sometimes be a captivating experience. Answering this question required some understanding of feeling—how we feel and why we feel. Damasio explains that feelings are a core component of our internal appraisal system—a system geared towards surviving and thriving in the world. Feelings measure our experience of being in the world, and they measure our internal states as well.

Our appraisal system, which is also a messaging system, is a bit like a mobile phone. We can use our phones to receive calls from friends and family, we can discover what's going on in the world by reading the news, and we can engage in a host of other activities that enable interaction with the world. We can also use our phones to write notes to ourselves and explore our inner life through writing and creativity. We can even calm our minds through directed activities like meditation. Likewise, our internal appraisal system (our feelings) measures our progress in the world (that iron is hot!) and our internal aspect (be still my beating heart).

Of course, our involvement in the external world is likely to trigger internal responses and the feelings that measure these (our "gut feeling" on being offered a lift by a stranger, for example). And these responses may cause us to act in a particular way (refusing the ride offered). Writers make use of these processes when they craft troubling scenarios that begin as mildly concerning (the offer of a lift from a stranger) but which escalate into something dangerous to life itself (oh-oh, the driver's a serial killer). Yet messages about our internal experiences do not necessarily result in action. Our inner workings are not always immediately relatable to the things we experience in the world. Sometimes this is because the relationship between external actions and internal feelings has become obscured or removed. Perhaps too much time has passed between an experience and our awareness of our feelings. Or maybe we have suspended our attention to the world momentarily, as happens when we read.

Even when describing the strange and the novel aspects of a story and its world, the writer must rely on the ordinary. We need the mental furniture of experience to help us fill in the gaps of a description. For example, when reading a story about a protagonist leaving an event late on a winter's night, we will, as readers, necessarily draw on aspects of personal experience (vicarious or actual) in imagining the scene. As we read about the protagonist's encounter with a stranger, it might almost feel like we're encountering this person—as when, for example, the person is described as stepping forward to say hello. We can almost picture their face. The almost-image occupies our mind's eye in the same way that an acquaintance's face fills the visual field when they come in close. It's what happens when people meet, after all.

Now suppose that, in the story, the stranger steps up to offer assistance. It's hard to get a cab on a dark winter night or the bus this late, and so, the protagonist accepts the ride. And you're right there with them, aren't you? Using fragments of your own experience, you piece together the described events. You've missed out on a cab before and you’ve been on a bus. Maybe you once waited for transport that never arrived. You've accepted lifts on the odd occasion, too, or else you've heard about others doing so. And perhaps you've met beguiling strangers and wondered… possibly, maybe.

This is what happens when we read. We piece together aspects of experience to help us imagine the described events. By involving fragments of recognizable experience, we activate our organism’s appraisal system and it assesses these actions and how we feel about them. This two-part appraisal system, which measures feelings that arise in response to our senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell), works with that part responsible for measuring the internal experience (our interoceptive measures), the latter being engaged as we imagine or recall experiences.

For example, as we read, some words are triggering internal precursors to action. Suppose the character in the book you are reading licks her lips. In that case, your internal response will include much of the architecture behind the movement of lip-licking: you are almost ready to lick your lips, but you don't because it wasn't food or desire that caused the marshaling of your inner world. No, it wasn't something in your external world at all. (Well, it was if you include the book as an external object. But you're not thinking about the physical shape of the book. You're focused on the meaning of the words.) In this way, multiple fragments of experience are involved when we imagine an action or simply read a word that we associate with an action. As we read, our inner workings are gearing up to lick our lips or dodge a tricky situation with a serial killer—all while we are (hopefully) sitting comfortably. As readers, our inner worlds may be getting mildly excited, challenged, ready to move or act somehow, but the external environment isn't asking much of us at all.

Damasio explains that our feelings keep us on track to surviving and thriving—we move towards things that feel good and away from what feels bad. Day by day, in mostly imperceptible ways, we sidestep trouble and keep on track by doing and being in ways that feel all right. (Sometimes even better than all right. But let's park those "better than all right" feelings for a moment. I'm not referring to intense feelings or emotions. I mean the ordinary existence kind of feeling. Organic stuff. The stuff of being a living thing that wants to survive and thrive.) Our body rewards us with a pleasurable feeling when we are on track and keeping ourselves safe in the world by understanding how to live in it organically. These feelings—good or bad—keep us alive and help us thrive.

Reading a good book taps into these processes. We ultimately feel good when we read about others doing and being in the world (whether fictional or non-fictional), even when these others are depicted in tricky situations (that is, provided we do not identify too closely with the character and their situation—but that’s another subject for another essay). This is because our interoceptive system measures high levels of activity (through our mental and imaginative involvement) at the same time that our senses are recording low levels of effort (sitting in an armchair while reading). When we close a book or briefly check in with ourselves, a reckoning of sorts occurs. The external measures of our senses tell our body that everything is fine. Not much is happening. But you just fought off a serial killer, right? You fought off a serial killer without even breaking into a sweat. And that feels good. Plus, you kind of almost licked your lips right now, without actually licking them. It’s a small saving in energy terms, but you gained access to the experience without having to do it, which is the point here.

My point is that reading feels good (and we notice this especially as we close the book) because we are speedily and almost effortlessly resolving what had been elevated levels of internally sourced feelings stimulated through our involvement in imagining the story. This isn't about whether we found the subject matter interesting or motivating. Remember, I'm talking about the simple feelings of organic life. But these simple feelings account in no small part for the pleasures of reading. As you close the book, appraisals of your performance are taking place, and, yes, you did amazingly well. You fought off a serial killer while sitting down, possibly with your legs tucked up, all snug and warm. The disparity between what you were imagining as you read and what you were actually sensing and doing with your body when reading, results in this positive feeling. This good feeling—the simple pleasure you have taken in reading—is your reward and encouragement for dealing effortlessly and efficiently with whatever problems your inner world threw up.

What does this mean for writers? Those of us who write creatively already know the importance of including sensual descriptions in our poetry and our narratives. This article explains why such strategies work. By getting readers involved in imagining a story's events, reading engages recollection processes that trigger feelings relevant to our appraisal system. This system, known as the homeostatic imperative, sustains our basic drive to survive (and to not only survive but to flourish also). Reading a sensually engaging story, requiring readers to draw on simple bodily experiences in their imagining, triggers what I call a sense of homeostatic efficiency. What happens is that the body’s appraisal system sends a positive message on the point of how you, the reader, are getting on in life at this point in time. When you read a good book, the message you get is that you’re doing just fine. That's why you get that buzzy feeling at the end of reading an essay, novel, or poem that had you utterly enthralled. That's your body's performance appraisal system rewarding you for fighting off a serial killer, or whatever else was involved, all while you were sitting comfortably.

The ideas discussed in this essay refer to or otherwise rely on the following published works:

Armstrong, Paul B. Stories and the Brain: The Neuroscience of Narrative. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

Damasio, Antonio. The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures. Pantheon Books, New York, 2018.

Feldman Barrett, Lisa. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Pan Books, 2018.