On the Pleasures of Not Reading
theparisreview.org
theparisreview.org
We tend to define ourselves by what we like and dislike, which is fine, except, most of the time, it's not based on fact, but on arbitrary decisions.
This is quite obvious with kids; for example, my two younger kids (6 and 7, boy and girl) try to hate the preferred foods of one another, even if they have to admit they like its individual components. The boy loves fruit yogurt but "hates" fruits (will leave the table when someone's eating a raw fruit next to him), and the girl actually does love fruits but decided she will never eat yogurt... or use a spoon.
This is all fake, it's all an act, and yet it's quite powerful and difficult to overcome. (What gives it away though, is that these "tastes" vary according to location; when in school, those preferences disappear!)
We adults use spoons, but act the same with literature, or really most of our tastes in arts or crafts or products; we like the idea of ourselves not liking this or that (hello, vegans! ;-)
Dislike and contempt is also much easier to develop and maintain than an actual taste that has to be nurtured; it's like free money.
I really should get around to reading Houellebecq.
First, it's an excuse to not know; I don't know this, not because I'm lazy and didn't make the effort to check it out, but because, you see, it's bad, or beyond me.
And second, it's hard to dislike something you actually got to know, because knowing requires some sort of empathy.
You can list all the problems with something you know, and say why it's not as good as it could be, etc., but if you declare that you "hate" it whole, it's a sign you don't know much about it.
I can't say that I agree. I don't see why dislike has to be irrational.
> You can list all the problems with something you know, and say why it's not as good as it could be, etc., but if you declare that you "hate" it whole, it's a sign you don't know much about it.
It's not one or the other. That list of "all the problems with something you know" is an explanation for why you dislike that something.
First, it's an excuse to not know; I don't know this, not because I'm lazy and didn't make the effort to check it out, but because, you know, it's bad, or beyond me.
And second, it's hard to dislike something you actually got to know, because knowing requires some sort of empathy.
You can list all the problems with something you know, and say why it's not as good as it could be, etc., but if you declare that you "hate" it whole, it's a sign you don't know much about it.
“when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.”
(I've judged your comment, and I've not created jack)
All glory to the entreprecreator, the ubermensch of the internet.
Seriously, let people try to define who they are themselves. Not a quote, a guru or a motivational speaker who tell you `you are this, you are that, they are this, they are that'. Or worse, any artist trying to define himself through the impact of his works or personality on... others.
Most lifer vegans I've met try to remain low key about it for the most part since it tends to result in the same arguments or discussions and it gets old quick.
Personally, I don't care what others eat. They could eat tasteless fiber, or artificial meat-tasting protein or actual meats. It's their choice.
On the other hand, if I'm a guest and there are only vegan choices, then that what there is, likewise if I'm a guest and there is only steak, that's what there is (and I don't like steak).
It's entirely dependent on context, for one thing: "good" or "bad" mean very different things to different people (and peoples).
A tastes good. A is good.
> Dislike and contempt is also much easier to develop and maintain than an actual taste that has to be nurtured; it's like free money.
> I really should get around to reading Houellebecq.
Try absorbing this material http://blogs.disney.com/oh-my-disney/2015/04/29/rapunzels-gu... before getting into Houellebecq.
Media has finally evolved to the point where the long tail is starting to become the market. This has interesting implications on consumption patterns, though what we're seeing is that the long tail is increasingly served by a single company: YouTube for video (excluding "head" or "neck" content on cable/Netflix/etc), Amazon for books, Steam for games, etc. This points to discovery and market access being a problem: people don't look for the long tail elsewhere because the draw of the long tail is selection, and only one store/site can boast the best selection of obscure content.
Where does this go? I have no idea, honestly. Media is incredibly interesting right now because of that. I don't know if the long tail effect is good or bad for society, but we're seeing it play out in a lot of weird ways right now (Trump's campaign, the awakening that the police may shoot a lot more innocent people than we realized, etc). Polarization (which can be thought of as drifting into the long tail of less-popular ideas) is happening, but it's happening irregularly throughout society without much of a discernible pattern.
>There are writers we instinctively, permanently dislike: not only will we never read them, we will quietly relish the not-reading, finding in it a pleasure that can occasionally rival reading itself.
I know exactly what the author is talking about, and it doesn't just apply to books; in fact, a far more visible and pervasive instance of this kind of behavior occurs with respect to music. So many people (and I don't exclude myself in the slightest) are so opinionated about what kind of music is "good" and make such gigantic points of what they refuse to listen to, sometimes to the extent of hostility! I fell into this trap for many years; within the last 6 months I decided to trash my preconceptions and force myself to believe that all music is good, and that "good music" is really just "music I like" since any judgement on the quality of art is necessarily subjective...not to say I completely stopped disliking some music anymore, but at least with that viewpoint I can happily coexist with people that like music I don't.
Anyway, great piece about a behavior lots of us engage in but few of us like to admit :P
I enjoy inflicting it on people who still believe it is uncool.
A regular low treatment of that will keep the kids off your lawn. And the coolest (!) thing about easy listening is you rarely have to pay more than $.50 for an album of it. It's almost as if people are trying to get rid of their grandparents' albums!
But then I started listening to more rap.. and a little more... and a little more... and while it'll never be my favorite genre, I'd developed a real appreciation for rap / hip-hop and listen to the stuff quite regularly now. Same for a lot of electronic / techno / house / trance stuff. Not my favorite, but certainly on my playlists now. I got really into listening to Giorgio Moroder last year. Love his stuff. 80's New Wave and pop stuff? Again, I've found there's some really amazing stuff there. Sure, there's plenty of crap, but there's some really genuinely fun and interesting stuff there.
And so on... I still don't listen to jazz, and I doubt I'll ever listen to much country or bluegrass, but I definitely decided to open up, and I've been rewarded by the effort.
(It also helps that I'm no longer in high school or a retail environment, so I'm much less likely to be a captive audience for overplayed radio stuff.)
This old chestnut has been trod out so many times it's becoming a dead horse. Not that it doesn't have a point, but I can remember a discussion here a while back (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8492659) where we went over a very similar topic, although with not as deep connections to culture in general.
Suffice to say, everyone selects, and usually from ignorance, unfortunately. The best you can do is force yourself to look at things you wouldn't normally, get out of your comfort zone, consider expert advice like that given in "How to Read a Book". And I say this as someone who has read Pratchett, enjoyed some of it, didn't enjoy other parts, and I will (probably) never read the twilight series as I consider it garbage (and no, I've never even looked at it).
The cynic in me thinks it all was really just a bunch of click-bait which in pratice it vertainly has been.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/20...
Hence the trolling. And while it might be clickbaitish, he did have a very good point, and just pointed out what we all do, which is namely to select, and usually from a position of ignorance.
While the call to read Great Literature can be seen as preachy, it survives for a good reason: Great Literature enriches, makes people better for having read it. It's one of those things people should aspire to for self-improvement.
But, I think most of us read to learn or to gain new perspectives, etc. So, openly hating things you haven't experienced or examined critically is about as anti-intellectual as claiming to have read things one hasn't. Why not just say, "I am more interested in [some type of fiction with certain themes], and my reading list is quite long." Easier and doesn't freeze out the conversation quite as badly.
I still haven't read Bayard's "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read"...
It's not worth worrying about, I think. Even if 90% of all (fiction) books are destroyed irrevocably tomorrow and no more are written ever you'll have enough to last you the next thousand years.
An interesting problem may be how to maximize enjoyment per reading hour given a functionally unlimited library: something like a cross between spotify and tinder for books, perhaps: present random high-interest page of a book. Swipe right to read next page. Swipe left for next random book.
This would make a great extension to Goodreads. I now wonder about sampling vocabulary and structure of various texts in order to match with your highest-rated books.
I like the idea (can't remember where I saw it) for a service that helps connect readers with books that would help them with their evolution. I think this idea is powerful and can take the idea of self-help to a much deeper level that encompasses spirituality and psychological well-being rather than just fads and fashion trends by helping people find novels that aren't straightforwardly "about" an area of life but happen to address it deeply in their own way.
Teaser:
"Of course there was never any such thing as truly independent aesthetic judgment. No cultural artifact ever appears out of nowhere, to be taken purely on its own terms; there is always what reception theory calls “a horizon of expectation.” And who would want to possess independent aesthetic judgment anyway? It would mean you were impervious to the enthusiasms of your friends and the arguments of critics; it would mean that you were a total blockhead, ineducable, stupid."
So much truth here. The sad thing is, barring some Kurzweilian breakthrough in life-extension technology, none of us will live long enough to read all the books we might want to read. I often joke with people "I wish all my favorite authors would quit writing for about 100 years and give me a chance to catch up, and they just won't". But even the joke is silly, because IF I lived another 100 years, and IF none of my favorite authors wrote anything else in that time, I'd still not "catch up". In fact, I'd venture I'll still be further behind at the end, as NEW writes keep spring up as well.
You can't win, really. And since you have to make a choice based on something, I figure it might as well be pretty close to arbitrary. There are authors I'll never read, although perhaps not many that I would make a fuss over actively avoiding. But out of that list, there are probably plenty I'd enjoy very much, if I bothered to read them. Maybe I'd like some of them more than some of the authors I read now. But the bitter irony is, you can't really know if you'd like reading a book or... until you have already read it. sigh
I think the best most of us can hope for is simply to make it a point to try and be at least somewhat diverse in our reading, and take the occasional foray into unexplored territory. I did that a while back when I picked up my first Haruki Murakami novel. I'd heard of him, heard him mentioned by a lot of "literary" types, and assumed his work was probably snotty, pretentious "pat yourself on the back" stuff, and so put off reading anything by him for quite some time. And then I read After Dark and I was hooked. I've still only read two of his works (the other being Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki) but I'd now mention Murakami as one of my favorite authors.
I resisted reading the Harry Potter books for quite a while because "they're kids books". Once I read them, I found that they were very much worth the time. OTOH, I started Infinite Jest by DFW a while back, and I have been struggling to find any enthusiasm for reading this book. Should I continue with it just because it's so widely revered? Or should I read something I enjoy more instead? That's one of life's little conundrums. shrug
At the end, you just have to do the best you can. Nobody gets out of life alive and all that...
Then I realized I'd screwed the pooch when I saw the director's credit on Zack & Miri. Cute film, but not a real eye-opener in terms of humor or thematic content.
OK, I admit I read most of it, but I really am enjoying not finishing it.
:-D
Heck, just look at how he summarizes at the end: "And soon enough, it seems that what passes as taste is an arbitrary extension of our insecurities and neuroses, and that an insane hubris undergirds every value judgment, and that the best thing to do would be to start over, bringing no preconceptions at all into our lives as readers."
If I missed the part where he actually advocates prejudice please point it out.
Let's put it this way: due to his guilt, instead of an unapologetic celebration of not reading with prejudice, it's an apologetic celebration of the same.
Then there are the advicing, "yeah, I know it's bad, yeah, health, yeah, nutricion, you shouldn't do it, we miss on better foods etc".
But that part is more like an obligatory guilt/save-face addition, whereas the core is "I do, you've done it, it's normal and even enjoyful".
It sure doesn't seem to me like an article written with the intention to putting an end to the practice -- more to admit it and excuse it. Eveywhere he stomps on the guy who dismissed Pratchett without having read him, he adds "but, ...", and "don't get me wrong, ...".
But hey, kudos for a cogent defense of your position. Good internetting!