"Outside of a dog"

"a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.” (Ba dum bum.)

This witty one-liner is generally attributed to the late comedian Groucho Marx, and, punch line aside, he may have been on to something.

In a recent issue of the journal Psychological Science, a team of researchers found that readers can feel a “true sense of belonging” to the people in fiction. The novels used for this study in particular were Harry Potter (yay) and Twilight (ugh), and after just thirty minutes of being absorbed in the plot, subjects reported feeling the same positive effects as they did after spending time with actual people. One of the authors of the study is quick to point out that reading should not be a replacement for living, breathing people with whom one can have a relationship, but that some of that need to feel like we belong to something can be achieved with books.

Well, yeah.

I know that not everyone is a voracious reader, or, perhaps more fairly, not everyone is a voracious reader of fiction. (I would argue that narrative nonfiction, like memoirs, would probably garner the same results, but I think it’s safe to say that analytical/informational nonfiction probably doesn’t.) But my closest friends and I are big readers, even if our taste differs. And anyone who has ever been swept up in a book can relate to that feeling of wanting to be immersed in the storyworld, wishing a character were your friend/mother/husband, even pet. (The canine narrator, Enzo, of The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein might be one of the most wonderful dogs in fiction. Ever.*)

Maybe we would give a character advice—yes, make him breakfast tomorrow, Molly! Maybe we’d like to just hang out—the Weasley twins would be an exhausting amount of fun, as would Tiny Cooper. We might want to date a character—Nick Carraway seems nice; Mr. Darcy is generally popular—be their adoptive daughter (the Boatwright sisters), go on their adventures (Lyra), etc. There are so many characters I would love to have in my classroom as a student—Delly, Holling Hoodhood, maybe even Holden—and I would of course have loved to gone to Hogwarts. (I mean, seriously.) I don’t want to get into the Arena during the Hunger Games, but hanging with Jace, Clary and Simon at the Institute? Yes, please.

Even if the characters are pathetic, heinous or wacko—I’m about a tenth of the way through Infinite Jest and, quite frankly, I don’t want to be friends with any of them, yet—if the author has done his/her job well, it should take a moment for me to re-register myself in place and time after placing that bookmark. I should put the book down, get up from my couch/pool chair/bed and have to actively remember that I live alone with my cat who, despite my desperate wishes, does not talk back to me. I should be able to take mindless sips of my chai latte and be deaf to the buzz of my local bookstore or coffee shop. I should almost miss my bus stop. When I find those books that suck me in, I don’t feel alone or lonely. I feel like I just spent some quality time with people that matter to me.

Of course, TV shows can do this, too. (Movies, well, less so, because the total amount of time required is far less than a series, but still, not impossible, obviously. Weren’t there cases of depression recorded after Avatar came out and people were so sad Pandora wasn’t real?) I’ve developed actual crushes on tv characters—McGee from NCIS, Dr. Reid from Criminal Minds—and felt distraught after a summer of intense serial DVD watching—Gilmore Girls circa 2003, Freaks and Geeks earlier this summer—ended.

But I like that this study focused on books. As an only child, I spent many, many, many hours reading when I was younger. Sure, I was a totally dorky kid with a 10 inch black and white tv who lived on a dead end street with exactly one other kid my age, but I enjoyed reading, even then. Like most kids, I tried my hardest to push back my bedtime, and could often read until “late” in the evening if my worn-out-from-working-and-raising-a-kid-alone mom fell asleep on the couch. One year when I was ten or so, I got through the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder series; those books were huge! And I read all of them! In two months! I would often sit in the car until I finished the latest installment of The BabySitters Club that I picked up at the library one mile up the road, and I once very narrowly avoided a horribly embarrassing encounter with aforementioned kid my own age when, in the dead of summer in our non air conditioned house, I was reading in my undies on the couch and he, uncharacteristically, biked up to our front porch instead of parking in the driveway and knocking on that door. Yipes.

I’m not such a bibliophile that I think books will alleviate all of my loneliness—then or now—nor am I delusional enough to believe characters are actual people that I can talk to or be around, even though I would almost always start novel discussions in my classroom with “let’s talk about our friend, [insert character’s name here].” And I admit that I am a bit of an over-feeler (not to be confused with an over-taster, which I also am guilty of being); I avoid some books because of the content (The Underneath), have stopped reading others because I was afraid of what would happen to a person or animal (Room and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle), and have been known to shamelessly cry in public or to talk aloud to the pages of my text. I get wrapped up in some stories at the expense of bathing, eating or, much to the above researcher’s chagrin, being around actual people. But as a single person with limited funds, it’s nice to know that a room full of friends awaits me at my public library.

Hey, it’s nice to feel popular.

*They’re making this into a movie to be released sometime in 2012. I’m dubious how this will be achieved since it’s focalized through a dog and that means they’ll likely alter it so completely the spirit of the story will be destroyed. I look forward to being proven wrong.