
The Case Against Reading Everything - samclemens
https://thewalrus.ca/the-case-against-reading-everything/
======
todd8
I've read a great deal for the last 50 years, but I feel that this gives me
little time for fiction. Every time I pick up a fictional work, I know that
I'm going to be forgoing hours of reading or thinking about other things. I
feel that I have limited time for fiction. Sadly, this causes me to miss out
on the joy of reading good fiction.

It's easy to speed read technical material, especially with the benefit of 50
years of doing it--I simply look for the new material that is inevitably mixed
with lots of introductory or background material; I really can't read fiction
any faster than my normal relaxed, rather ordinary reading speed. Fiction can
take so many twists and turns that it's not possible to dash through it
without reading every paragraph.

Recently, I've been thinking about revisiting the subject of my undergrad
degrees, Mathematics. I just don't know if I really have time in my life to go
back and relearn Topology for example. I didn't appreciated (nor respect) it
enough to learn it well when I took Topology 45 years ago, now I wish I
recalled it.

It's sobering to consider how few kilo-days I've got left. :(

~~~
naiyt
Have you considered audio books? That's the main way I consume fiction these
days. I love listening to audio books while doing other things (commuting,
cleaning, going on walks, etc). It's a good alternative (or companion) to
listening to music or podcasts. Looking at my Audible library I've listened to
about 27 books in the past few years (most of them fiction).

------
egypturnash
My experience as an artist AND a writer (I make comics, it involves both) is
that cribbing from one person is plagarism, while cribbing from eight people
in the course of a single drawing/paragraph is a Bold, Original Style.

Reading widely has exposed me to new ideas, some of which became favorites.
It's also exposed me to a lot of bad writing, which is helpful in building
that inner sense that says "this sentence is shit" or "this sentence is
amazing". And it's given me a good sense of the clichés of how a plot will
progress, and how to balance using them because, well, they're clichés because
_they work_ , against doing something different to suit the precise needs of
the story, or to surprise readers.

And yes, I have also chased obsessions, too. There's time for both. I've got
favorite creators who I've devoured everything they made, and will buy a new
work from without needing any review.

Hell, the two key insights that helped me approach the very complicated last
third of my dense, weird graphic novel came from re-reading an old favorite
(Iain M. Banks's "Use of Weapons") and from watching something way out of my
comfort zone (J.C. Staff's "Revolutionary Girl Utena"). It would have been a
lot less coherent without the lessons in the power of repetition I learnt from
Utena.

Ultimately whatever works for you as a creator is good, but I sure do find
that a more broadly-cast net has a lot more interesting things to pick and
choose from in it.

------
skywhopper
The author appears to misunderstand the advice. “Read widely” doesn’t mean
“ignore quality”, or “read things you hate”, or “the next book you read should
be a different author than the last”. It also doesn’t mean “read everything”.

Meanwhile this author loves advice about semicolons and em-dashes? Okay.

------
briga
I think the benefit of reading widely if that you start to realize how almost
nothing is original. Nearly everything has been done before and done better.
Once you realize that you can start carving out a piece of original territory
as a writer. A writer without that perspective is inevitably going to write
low-quality unoriginal books.

Reading widely isn't about reading everything. Any good reader will learn to
discriminate between good and bad writing over time, and will inevitably be
drawn to books that are worth reading. No man is an island, and no writer is
an island either. The whole endeavor of human knowledge is all about being
bolstered by the minds that have came before you and adding a little on top of
that.

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WhoIsSatoshi
I sympathize, I love reading but I intently skip some books until they have
surfaced - I view reading as a monte-carlo localization: read what appear to
have the most probable high reward as determined by the prior exploration, but
occasionally throw a curveball in there in case you might be missing something
that is just that far out. Interestingly, can be applied to many other aspects
of one's life.

~~~
wittedhaddock
I have explained utility maximization of reading using monte-carlo visual in
the past. I appreciate your comment.

------
dansanderson
The article doesn't directly address (or takes as read) the ways reading is
supposed to make you a better writer. Depth is better than breadth because a
deep read is how you internalize how language communicates ideas.

The argument for breadth, especially the kind of breadth that says "read trash
as well as classics," assumes at least a deep enough reading to understand how
a piece of writing works or doesn't work. Understanding how Dan Brown novels
are bad--and how they're good--can be illuminating. The article seems to be
arguing that this idea is overrated, and that giving that kind of attention to
bad writing (or just many kinds of writing) is counterproductive.

I "read" constantly. I just read this article and many comments here. But I
almost never read in a mode that would supposedly improve my writing. The
advice to read more in that mode makes sense. Letting all kinds of garbage
wash over me uncritically does not.

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vorotato
Sure convinced me, I didn't even read this article.

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thisisit
Isn't the solution to read from a selected list rather than take everything
you can get your hands on? That's why people tend to look at year-end, best of
lists, especially the ones generated from a _wide range_ of audience.

~~~
stepvhen
reading from a selected list, which implied the list is not selected by the
reader who uses it, wont allow for real individual exploration, finding ones
own unique combination of tastes. thats without considering that most lists
generated by large audiences wont include books from ibdependent presses,
difficult books, or books that do in fact offer a broader view and different
perspective of subject matter. most aggregations result in watered down and
untimately forgettable literature; next time you have the opportunity, ask a
bookseller (preferably one at an independent bookstore) what they think of the
new york times "best sellers"

------
squozzer
I think David Bowie said it best -- the only art I'll ever study is stuff that
I can steal.

[http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/726892307/david-bowie-
tas...](http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/726892307/david-bowie-tasteful-
thief)

------
troisdetroie
The advice seems to be for aspiring writers, and I'm glad it is because I'm
not one and I enjoy reading too much to limit myself to one subject or author.

Reading wide and reading are complementary, I don't see how one can be a good
writer without doing both.

------
cafard
I belong to a neighborhood book club, which means that I read roughly five
books a year that somebody else picked. I don't think that this is a bad
thing, though often enough my reaction to the book is indifference or even
loathing.

------
foobarbecue
Reading everything is bad? Ok, I'll start by not reading this article.

------
colorincorrect
reading everything isn't the goal, its the consequence of an expanding taste
and openness to experience. read more, fear not.

------
vonnik
The author is being provocative in order to be noticed, and his strategy
worked. He could have articulated the same point in another way.

Everyday every reader faces a choice between exploration and exploitation,
between reading someone new and strange, or something more written by someone
he knows. Both are necessary. If you don't explore, you'll never find the
writers you truly love. If you don't exploit, you will never truly know them.

And there's a balance to be struck between the two strategies, a balance that
varies over time. "Read widely" could be interpreted as anti-obsession, while
"read narrowly" is clearly anti-discovery. But readers need to both discover
and obsess, and discovery necessarily comes first.

Guriel doesn't talk about how he discovers the next object of his obsession,
he glosses over the discovery phase in order to emphasize the obsession. In a
perfect world, we would simply move from one great writer to the next without
disappointments or slack time. It doesn't always happen that way.

Some people are born into families, institutions and social circles that will
lead them straight to the great writers. The lucky ones have access to a
cultural lineage that shows them the breadth and possibility of art. Curation
aids their discovery.

Others, like me, will waste many years on pap and not know for years what
they're missing. Garcia Marquez spent his adolescence reading stilted poetry
before Kafka showed him, as a young man, what prose could do with the first
sentence of The Metamorphosis [0], or before Mrs. Dalloway taught him how
language could handle time.[1]

But I guess the point is that any given moment we face a tradeoff between
exploration and exploitation. We have to choose which is more promising:
another volume of our current obsession or taking a risk on an unknown.

In my experience, the obsession always wins, and it also always ends, not
because the reader becomes tired of the writer, but because the writer
produces a finite body of work, and after we read it all, we're back to
blindly groping the shelves.

So long term, we have to find something new, and the real question that's not
being addressed here is: What kind of new? Do I move on from one author of
mystery novels [action thrillers, Harlequin romances, substitute genre here]
to another? Or do I seek out categorically new kinds of pleasure?

Anyone who's read enough knows there is good writing and bad writing in every
genre and every national literature, and so your meta-genres become just good
or bad writing, no matter what the writing is about. That discovery comes
slowly after a lonely slog in the wilderness of mass media, or it comes
quickly, when one of your friends presses a book in your hands and says "Read
this."

[0] [http://petitchou.tumblr.com/post/225168928/various-
translati...](http://petitchou.tumblr.com/post/225168928/various-translations-
of-the-first-sentence-of) [1]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=XJE_CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT11&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=XJE_CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT11&lpg=PT11&dq=gabriel+garcia+marquez+mrs.+dalloway+rings+teeth+queen&source=bl&ots=oDk8_27vOi&sig=Ocu1Ti9eGPPzUK11RxI78pW94ms&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLleyp2pHYAhVFJiYKHaaMAmcQ6AEIQDAK#v=onepage&q=gabriel%20garcia%20marquez%20mrs.%20dalloway%20rings%20teeth%20queen&f=false)

~~~
vonnik
And to follow up, obsession can lead to further discovery. If you love an
author, you can read every author they loved. Or if you're obsessed with a
topic, like Japanese imperialism or Victorian naturalists, that combines
exploitation and exploration.

------
jonnathanson
This article is horseshit. I'm a professional writer, and I'll trust Oates and
King over whoever this guy is.

"Read widely" isn't some religious dictum. It's more of a religious calling.
(Of sorts.) If you love to read, and you love to write, you naturally read all
fucking day. Your thirst is unquenchable. Your tastes are varied. So you drink
from many different fountains.

You also realize there is no trade off between depth and breadth. It's a false
dichotomy. It seems to be manufactured by people who find the act of reading
some sort of chore. I do not. I find it the highest pleasure I have ever
experienced.

Perhaps there's a difference between being naturally curious and being forced
to read broadly. I dunno. I've never had to be forced. I like reading and
writing the way many of us like programming. I'm truly sorry if the author
does not. Writing's a hell of a shitty way to make a living; I can't imagine
what it'd be like if you didn't at least enjoy the sport of it.

~~~
folksinger
The point of the article was in encouraging writers to hone in on an
individual voice as opposed to being influenced by thousands of competing
tones.

Perhaps an analogy to songwriting will make things more clear: how well
received are the works of someone who writes rap-funk-metal-folk-electro-
bluegrass songs?

It's not that a successful country music songwriter can't listen to and enjoy
hip-hop but you'll find they tend mainly to listen to and be influenced by
country music.

~~~
ellius
I think maybe the only way to be a good artist though is to explore the things
that resonate with you. If rap-funk-metal-folk-electro-bluegrass speaks to
your soul, and creating that music fulfills you, then who’s to say exploring
those genres is a mistake? There are other measures of success than
recognition.

Austin Kleon puts this especially well in “Steal Like An Artist.” He says that
you can cut off some of your passions, and try to focus on one thing, but
eventually you will “feel the pain of the phantom limb.”

~~~
folksinger
Neither of us want me to write an essay about Wittgenstein's notion of
"meaning through social interactions" and how this applies to artistic value,
but I'll summarize it thus: art needs an audience.

Now, given the vast population of the world, I'm sure there are a few people
out there who are into bluegrass-rap fusion, but your friends, family and
neighbors are probably not going to get much out of it.

So who do you want to make art for? Who do you want making art for you? Random
strangers peicing together art from fragments of digital audio they stumble
across while surfing on an endless stream of information?

~~~
ellius
I think ultimately we’re going to go back and forth about an unanswerable
question: what fulfills people? You can’t answer it for anyone else. One
artist will need the audience as a foil; another will be perfectly happy to
toil away in obscurity. To my mind the best advice is “try a lot of things and
see what feels right to you; don’t be dogmatic about your approach until you
have a very high level of confidence based on experience.” Beyond that I’m
just not sure this is a question with a meaningful answer.

~~~
folksinger
This is the solipsistic perspective of someone floating in the ocean, looking
in only one direction and sure they are alone, sure they are surrounded by
nothing but an endless expanse, completely unaware that they are just a few
hundred feet from the shoreline that lies behind them.

The answer is not different, it is the same for EVERYONE! Turn around and swim
back to land!

~~~
ellius
Recognizing that people are unique does not immediately equate to solipsism.
That would be like me saying that recognizing any kind of commonality
immediately implies collectivism.

------
guywaffle
Hmm take advice from the greatest author of the last thousand years, Stephen
King, or someone who has three books I’ve never heard of?

~~~
brett40324
Not sure why you're down voted, but it's probably for the lack of further
description on why not to take the latter author's advice.

Anyhow, i agree with following Steven King as someone to look into for
inspiration and advice on writing. The only reason i'm making this comment is
because i want to mention something i once read about King that has always
stuck with me. That being, that when he ends the last page of a novel, he then
writes the first page of his next work right away to avoid ever having a time
without some work in progress.

