{"id":2455,"date":"2020-02-11T21:47:05","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T21:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/?p=2455"},"modified":"2020-02-11T21:47:07","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T21:47:07","slug":"the-never-ending-dilemma-of-trying-to-be-well-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/?p=2455","title":{"rendered":"The Never-Ending Dilemma of Trying to Be Well-Read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(Licensed by the author, 2020)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First off, this isn\u2019t a post that\u2019s designed to glorify how much I\u2019ve read. Posts like that have a habit of being a bit condescending, boring and painful to get through. Yes, I\u2019ve read a lot of stuff. But so have so many other people. This post really isn\u2019t about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What this post is about is one of the consequences of reading a lot of stuff. As a social creature, I really love to share great literature and nonfiction with other people. The problem is: Most people don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll let you in on a little secret: I love to read. When I was a kid, just learning to read, I remember having finished all of the stuff other kids were supposed to read and then asking for more. The teacher had nothing else to share in the classroom at that time, but she had been reading \u201cCrime and Punishment\u201d by Dostoevsky, which was on her desk. I asked about that, and she told me it was too difficult for someone of my young age. So, the next day, I got my mom to check out the book for me from the public library. And I struggled through it, and finished it. Years later, I\u2019ve probably read that book at least five times. I get something new from it each time I read it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A more recent example: I just finished reading Men Explain Things to Me<\/em> by Rebecca Solnit, a brilliant writer and thinker who also wrote A Paradise Built in Hell<\/em>, which I love for its alternative approach of explaining history and the ramifications that occur during history. Both books are chalked full of history, so because I work with a couple of history people, I thought about recommending those books to them. The response I generally received was a blank stare, almost an admission of \u201cyour review to me didn\u2019t convince me that I should waste my time reading what you were talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s the problem right there. Over the years, as I\u2019ve read more and more brilliant stuff, I\u2019ve often recommended it to other people. What I\u2019ve discovered is that so few people take up the gauntlet and decide to read those books. Instead, they listen to your explanation of that book and then because you\u2019ve explained everything about it to them, they decide not to read it, possibly thinking that they\u2019ve already absorbed the knowledge of that book by the mere moment you spent explaining it to them. And then they go on with their lives, only reading the things they find significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reminded me of two things. First, Rebecca Solnit\u2019s book Men Explain Things to Me<\/em>, in which she details an encounter she had with a boorish man who found out she was a writer and had written on a particular obscure topic so spent the next hour or so telling her she had to read this book about her subject if she was ever going to understand it like he did. Turns out, she wrote that book he was talking about, and as men behave like men, he took forever to acknowledge that once finding out, and then still managed to talk down to her regardless of realizing that fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, the concept of knowledge and literature requires a modern scholar to actually read the texts himself or herself and not just the cliff notes version (and especially not just the conversation about it from someone who read it instead). Imagine discussing Plato with someone who has never read it but watched a lecture on Plato once. That works great if neither of you have read it (you can be clueless together) but when you\u2019re the one who has read him, discussing it with someone who has no intention of reading it is a complete waste of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s how I feel when I talk about literature with people and discover that they\u2019re not going to read it, condemning it because they didn\u2019t read it first. I talked about Solnit with one person and actually saw his face turn negative, like he was disgusted by the fact that he\u2019d never heard of her before, and thus, she was unimportant in his mind. That\u2019s the kind of emotional response I receive a lot when I talk about literature that is important yet obscure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What probably bothers me the most is that people often do not even realize that the books we read are snapshots of the best works of lives that we may never experience again. Other times, they\u2019re snapshots of careers in progress, such as when I recall having read the early works of Ken Follett (who wrote a brilliant spy thriller in Eye of the Needle <\/em>and then turned around and wrote one of the worst mysteries with ever bad writing technique available soon after that; and then he followed that up with one of the greatest historical narratives I have yet to read in my lifetime). It\u2019s like having great conversations with people who have so much to tell us, and we\u2019re limiting ourselves to only what\u2019s popular, and quite often, on some television or movie screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s almost gotten to the point where I may not discuss literature with people any more. I remember bringing up Haruki Murakami to one colleague recently and received that \u201cI haven\u2019t read him, so obviously he\u2019s not significant\u201d response. Keep in mind, Murakami is probably among the most respected authors living in the world today. But because he\u2019s not \u201cknown\u201d to some individual, I end up having to explain his significance, which finally ends with a sense of \u201cwell, if I should find myself on a deserted island, am already bored and his book is all that\u2019s there, I might read it.\u201d Again, I find myself thinking, screw you and I hope you remain uneducated for life. But fortunately, I\u2019m not that elitist. Well, not after I\u2019ve had my first morning diet Dr Pepper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First off, this isn\u2019t a post that\u2019s designed to glorify how much I\u2019ve read. Posts like that have a habit of being a bit condescending, boring and painful to get through. Yes, I\u2019ve read a lot of stuff. But so have so many other people. This post really isn\u2019t about that. What this post is … Continue reading The Never-Ending Dilemma of Trying to Be Well-Read<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_regular_price":[],"currency_symbol":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2044,420,741,1055,1832],"class_list":["post-2455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-authors","tag-education","tag-learning","tag-reading","tag-writing"],"post_slider_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","post_slider_layout_landscape_large":"","post_slider_layout_portrait_large":"","post_slider_layout_square_large":"","post_slider_layout_landscape":"","post_slider_layout_portrait":"","post_slider_layout_square":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2456,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions\/2456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarbonn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}