
On Not Reading - samclemens
http://www.chronicle.com/article/On-Refusing-to-Read/237717
======
pavlov
In 8th grade I had a great teacher in a class called "Literary French". This
was in a French-oriented high school in a boring Nordic city. Usually the
teachers there were a motley crew of random francophones with no credentials
whatsoever... Except for this one incredibly smart guy, who was actually a
published author from Paris. (The general assumption was that he had ended up
as a teacher in that nowhere place because of a woman.)

This being a literature-oriented full-year class, there was naturally a list
of books to be read. Somebody asked: "Do we have to actually read these?" His
answer was: "No. In school, you can almost always manage if you read 30 pages
from the start, 30 pages from the end, and the author's bio. The important
thing is not to read every page but that we talk about the books."

No other teacher at that school would have said that. For an 8th grader, it
was like turning a key to unlock something that felt fundamental: books are
not checkmarks on an assignment list; school is not a collection of tightly
defined rote tasks to be performed for their own sake; what you get out of
books and school depends entirely on what you bring to the table yourself.

~~~
feral
Initially I thought you were advocating only reading the start and end of
books. I was going to make a comment about only running the start and end of a
marathon - you might get the best bits of the atmosphere, and afterwards be
able to discuss it as if you'd run it all - but you'd have missed the core of
the experience.

But, on reflection, maybe you are actually saying that the teacher meant you
could _get away_ with only reading the start and end; but the point was that
you got out what you put in, and so the focus shouldn't be on what you _have_
to do, but on what you _choose_ to do?

I'm not sure which you're saying :)

~~~
gbog
I'm over forty now and I am only starting to read the books we were assigned
to read at school, e.g. Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoevsky and the likes. In fact
I guess I read these books as a kid but got nothing out of them, except
grades. These are actually very good books, but being forced into reading them
is the very way to make them unpalatable for life. If I didn't gave them a
second try, I would still consider that as "literature" in the pejorative
sense. In fact they are life, just more concentrate and immersive.

~~~
mjevans
On the other hand, a lot of the books I had to read for assignments weren't
good reading, but did convey good messages.

1984: A HORRID read, but a very telling archetype of distopia.

The Great Gatsby: It really took 8 chapters to cover the thin vain outer shell
before cracking in to the empty but interesting destruction of it all? Maybe a
good metaphor for market crashes and corrections, but not a good read.

The discussion part; I don't recall having a single meaningful actual
/discussion/ of the books in class. That might have actually helped make the
mindless drudgery of reading them have more meaning and allowed for deeper
reflection about the meaning of the content we head read.

~~~
johnloeber
Gatsby is not about being a metaphor for anything in particular; it's a
snapshot of a particular time and place, an account of _what a certain society
was like_. It's just an intriguing (and quite beautiful) story that captures
the spirit of a certain era.

By analogy, what you wrote is like saying:

> The Mona Lisa? Roughly 75% of it is just kind of blurry. I can see her face
> in the middle, which I guess captures her likeness, but a photograph
> would've probably been better.

It's easy to miss the point or merit of these books in class: often they're
forced reading, you read them too early, etc. I would strongly encourage you
to pick up 1984 or The Great Gatsby again, and read it one of these days.
You'll probably get much more out of it.

These books are considered among the greatest ever for good reason, and I'm
sure you'll pick up on that if you give them another try. I think that Gatsby
is so good that I re-read it once a year.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Gatsby is really superficial, uncompelling, flat. I picked it up because it's
referenced so much in USA media as being the book kids read at high-school.

Personally I don't think anyone would be missing out by not reading it. It's
just a weirdly written snapshot of life that's presented in such a tedious and
uninspiring way ... what do you like about it?

One of the worst books I've read.

------
wppick
I feel like many books (especially non-fiction) have this predisposition of
making their books much longer than it needs to be. In essence, unless it's
highly technical/informational, their book is usually making some sort of an
argument that they sometimes stretch out to a certain number of pages to make
it seem to have more "depth". I feel like you can summarize a book down to
it's essence making it something like 20-50 times shorter, which I do by
highlighting and adding notes.

~~~
int_19h
For fiction, there's the separate aspect of enjoying the writing style
(including the more verbose ones, or the ones with more "unnecessary"
flourish) by itself. Obviously this is very subjective and depends on the
reader - just keep in mind that if you find the book too long and tedious
because it dwells too much on "uninteresting" points, or repeats itself,
someone else might actually find all that enjoyable.

In fact, that someone else may even be yourself at some later date - I have
found that some previously read books make more sense and become more
enjoyable after having personal life experiences that enable you to relate
emotionally, or just get you interested in the subject.

~~~
posterboy
> just keep in mind that if you find the book too long ...

... maybe you are reading too slow. I know I was reading faster when I was
much younger

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KVFinn
I could never get through Pynchon or whatever but Infinite Jest wasn't a slog
at all. Wonderful prose full of hilarious details and moments. Wacky sci-fi
alternative universe stuff. Great descriptions of dynamics in a tennis match.

It's certainly a _long_ book but you don't have to treat it like a academic
paper to enjoy reading it. It's a fun read, for real! Well actually it's kind
of depressing but moment to moment it's fun.

~~~
smaddox
Couldn't get into Infinite Jest. Still sitting on my bookshelf; ~50 pages in,
I really just didn't care.

DFW's Kenyan commencement speech is what got me interested in his writing. I'd
like to go back and finish Infinite Jest at some point, but I don't see it
happening any time soon.

~~~
johnloeber
The first 100 pages are by far the hardest. They contain the stylistically
most challenging passages, and DFW introduces nearly all characters and
settings within those 100 pages, in a non-linear fashion to boot. For that
reason, it takes a while to get into. You'll get the hang of it between page
150 and 250, and from there on, it's an absolutely riveting read.

~~~
laxatives
I'd mostly agree, but say that it took me more like 300 pages to "get" his
style and an additional 200 pages to actually enjoy. Its a serious investment,
but absolutely worth it. Easily one of my two favorite books of all time, next
to GEB. I finished it and had a strong urge to start reading it from the
beginning again immediately.

------
shanacarp
Actually, she's got a point.

The stuff you don't read don't become part of a knowledge base. Figuring out
how to circumvent that in order to learn and think is a huge issue, especially
if you want common culture and/or more knowledge growth.

EG: You could read about the nuance of every computer language by every author
out there - how does this help you become a better programmer? Alternatively,
how do you know when you should read something, especially if it isn't about
your language/issues you are dealing with right now, because it could be
insightful to problems you will be about to have in general. Multiply by lots
of people facing the same choices, and then what?

~~~
UweSchmidt
You should read a lot early in life - give youself a good education, and
kindle your imagination.

Then, at some point, start building on that foundation and get some work done
:)

------
gglover
Real life:

"Did you read Infinite Jest?"

"No"

"Okay"

Academia:

"Did you read Infinite Jest?"

"My small act of countercultural scholarly agency has been to refuse to
continue reading or assigning the work of David Foster Wallace. The machine of
his celebrity masks, I have argued, the limited benefits of spending the time
required to read his work. Our time is better spent elsewhere. I make this
assessment given the evidence I have so far accumulated"

"Okay"

~~~
neaden
This comes off as one of the more annoying articles I've ever read in my
entire life.

~~~
bigtunacan
After about two paragraphs I chose not to read it.

~~~
JoelBennett
I'm glad I'm not the only one.

------
platz
I don't really care that many people have a hard time with DFW's pretentious
style or book length. I enjoyed infinite jest immensely—there are some really
golden scenes that will stick with me forever. Would I read it if I was
overworked or busy? no.. but I wouldn't read Shogun or Shantaram if I was too
busy either.

My point is, if you don't feel like doing something, great—but then getting
prescriptive about it & trying to dissuade others seems like an error.

"Abundance" is not a personal problem in the arts - maybe it's a professional
one, but that is addressing an entirely different goal of curation rather than
as a recipient of art.

It is the idea that one is supposed to "keep up" or "know everything" ala
"last person to know everything" e.g. leibniz, is absurd.

The author has kind of buried the lede and is actually against subjugating
herself to accepting what "the literary marketplace put forward as worthy of
attention".

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dzdt
I think this is a much more interesting problem in the sciences than in
literature.

There is too much high literature for a scholar to read it all. So like
everyone else, the scholars mostly read what makes the popular bandwagon by
virtue of reaching a critical mass of interest.

But in the sciences, people are writing about things that matter! The
overlooked articles are missed progress.

In literature, writers are writing to write. If masterieces go unnoticed in
the avalanche of quotidian works...oh well? There are plenty of perfect
wildflowers which go wholy unappreciated as well. Should we mourn the missed
opportunity?

~~~
aninhumer
In the sciences, people in different fields are each reading from much smaller
subsets of the available papers (which are much shorter to start with), and
there's a system in place that means most reasonably competent papers will get
read by at least a few people in the field.

------
laxatives
This argument applies to all forms of media. As the barrier to entry to create
plummets, there's going to be an insane amount of noise, even if there's tons
of good stuff around. If you don't need a publisher's/editor's approval, no
one is going to tell you your work is not worth distributing.

But "not reading" is click bait. The author is just being more selective in
how they spend their time, since they can only afford to consume an
increasingly narrow sliver. But you are seriously missing out if you elect to
ignore the (good) stuff that will last, like (IMO) GEB and Infinite Jest.

------
btym
I got about one paragraph into this article before deciding to exercise my
intellectual freedom to not read it.

------
daxfohl
Happened to me in HS:

Other guy: Why do you read all these books?

Me: I don't know, just to say I've read them I guess.

Other guy: Well I still _say_ I've read them!

Me: (feel dumb)

~~~
projektfu
So, does this suggest that the new canon is full of books that are actually
uninteresting? Because it seems to me that canonical books should be there
because everyone found them worthwhile, even if some of them seem daunting.
For example, Les Misérables, is a worthwhile book, fully interesting in my
opinion.

I do sometimes read books because of the hype, like Catcher in the Rye, that I
later wish I read something better. But the only book I read to say I read it
was "The Beautiful and Damned" because I heard it called a book that you
always wish you could say you had read but you never did. Of course, it wasn't
as good as I hoped.

But, dang, if you are reading just to be able to drop names, get a new
hobby...

~~~
majormajor
David Foster Wallace (amusingly enough) wrote on such themes. IIRC, the piece
I'm thinking of is a review of a biography of Dostoevsky. He talked about how
many old classics are full of sincere, deeply held beliefs, that in more
modern (postmodern) literature would be mocked endlessly. Strong beliefs are
now mainly written about to tear them down with snark, and being ironic/jaded
is the default posture of fiction.

Is that accurate, and does that result in less interesting works? I think
there's a definite argument to be made there.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I think that finding something worth caring about that doesn't prove to be
hollow is one of the fundamental problems of modern life, perhaps especially
for intellectuals. So those works may be more interesting to people who
wrestle with that in their personal lives.

~~~
majormajor
Ah, interesting side-question there: does the arrow point both ways?
Disillusioned authors writing for a disillusioned public -> increased chance
of public being disillusioned in the future if they grow up exposed primarily
to media telling them everything is empty?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Sure, there's a feedback loop. There always is in culture. But then the voices
that go against the culture are sometimes the ones most worth hearing.

------
throwanem
tl;dr: Tenured literary critic cautiously questions the usefulness of
popularity as a metric for evaluating literary fiction, with specific
reference to David Foster Wallace's absurd timewaster _Infinite Jest_.
('Absurd timewaster' is my phrase, not hers, but when you boil down what she
said, it's what you have left in the pot.)

~~~
sixo
One thing worth considering is that not everyone considers the same things to
be worthwhile, but popularity is too coarse a metric to use to choose what to
read. IJ was one of the most valuable (to me) books I've ever read, and I
finally read it after about three false starts on the basis of some clues (eg
Schwarz' review) that I might find it so valuable. A mainstream full of -you-
would have misled me.

Figuring out what books you're going to like is _really hard_. If anyone knows
a good way, besides the extensive process of collecting reviewers you trust
and making friends who know your tastes - do share.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I'm not sure it can be done. Maybe part of the answer is for you to give
yourself permission to quit a book after reading, say, one quarter of it. Then
you can be the judge for yourself. (Or did your false starts carry you that
far through IJ?)

~~~
ktRolster
Wow, I'm much more petulant. If the first page doesn't capture my attention, I
flip somewhere in the middle, randomly, then read. If the author can't engage
me on any of a few randomly selected pages, I drop the book.

(Some exceptions are made, for example, if someone recommends the book).

------
elliotec
Take her advice, save yourself some time and don't read this article.

~~~
abc_lisper
Oh! I refused to read that article. As I glanced through it, there was some
"beautiful comparison between egg and an omelette". I yawned!

------
ktRolster
Maybe the author should read more......her prose might be more tolerable if
she did.

~~~
brianwawok
This is how people with English degrees write. She said about 3 things in 3000
words. I think it was the years of paper length requirements.

------
quanticle
gwern points this out in his essay, Culture Is Not About Esthetics [1]. He
points that even if he read only the books that won awards, there would still
be far too many to finish in his lifetime. Given that, it is no crime to
ignore recent books, and, in fact, it may be better for us to stop publishing
new literary works and concentrate on better appreciating the old masters.

[1]:
[http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics](http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics)

~~~
projektir
My main issue with this is that I believe there are certain styles of books
that don't exist yet because they are created as societies emerge. And I would
very much want them to exist. Just like there are movies I would want to
exist, and video games I would want to exist. And, in many cases, there are no
proper alternatives.

On a similar note, I'm increasingly less interested in a lot of old literature
due to the "I've seen this before, we've already talked about this, and this
perspective is massively outdated" effect.

For all the talk of how there's lots of everything, there are still whole
categories of topics I have never seen at all, or they were covered really
poorly.

I think this concerns are better addressed by superior aggregators and niche
audiences than by the banning of production of media.

------
jolux
I think there is a kernel of truth here (popularity != quality) but that being
a truism the rest of the article is just justifying why the author doesn't
read books that are considered good books. It's entirely true that large books
command more attention than small ones, but I think writing a really good
large book is much more difficult than writing a really good small book, which
seems reductionist but just considering how quickly you an iterate on a
shorter book vs. the time it takes to revise or rewrite a longer one. There's
a quote from a review of some Franzen or Safran-Foer novel that talks about
how a new writer's first page is brilliant, first chapter is great, and how it
basically trails off from there most of the time. Maintaining the prose
quality and style and complexity of narrative that Wallace does in Infinite
Jest is no mean feat, and this may seem controversial but I think in that
sense it is a greater accomplishment than some shorter works.

This isn't to say I don't see the value in brevity or that I don't believe
it's difficult to write good short books: I do think it's difficult. However
because reading a 1000-page book does take more time (I don't think it's
necessarily harder word for word) you have to make the writing worth it, which
is undeniably difficult.

------
alexandroid
Somebody should learn how to write more concisely.

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Dowwie
Not difficult to relate this article to how we use Hacker News..

------
wmnwmn
What I'm getting out of this article is another angle on the pointlessness of
literary criticism and possibly even literary studies. Let's have the English
department focus on teaching people how to write rather than how to analyze,
reanalyze and overanalyze works of literature. What all this overthinking
leads to is just the muddle found in the posted article.

------
devin
More like: "On Not Reading This Article".

------
ArkyBeagle
Y'know... I use BookTv as a filter these days. Sometimes, the BookTv is all I
get. Other times, it's worth getting the book ( at least from a library ).

This is probably somehow a Wrong Thing but I can't help it. Ann Coulter (!!!)
was flogging her Trump book recently, and she almost came off as human.
There's not the same pressure to be a performer there.

------
donpark
I chose not to read this article. Just do it.

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Paul_S
I'm amazed literary critique is a job. Definitely Ark B material. This book
fetishism always rubs me the wrong way. A book is a conveyer of thought. Like
a conversation, phone, film, comic, game, diagram, chart. As much as I
appreciate your agonising over Infinite Jest your opinion of it based on not
having read it is not convincing. There is a solution to your conundrum you
face in this article - don't talk about Infinite Jest.

The whole idea of the Great Conversation or the like is preposterous and not
only because it's not physically possible (and hasn't been for decades). You
don't have to have been to all the countries on the planet to find common
ground and common language to talk about travelling and contribute to the
conversation.

------
avindroth
It's important to distinguish between books to read and books to inspect.

A vast majority belong in the latter.

 _How to Read a Book_ is a wonderful read on this topic.

~~~
peburrows
When you say "How to Read a Book is a wonderful read," do you mean one ought
to "read" or "inspect" it? :)

~~~
avindroth
Inspecting is probably fine.

I did something in-between. But applying the principles is probably more
important.

------
bsingin64
could be good... didn't read it.

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oliv__
Didn't read.

~~~
Taylor_OD
Oops. I didnt see your comment before I posted mine.

~~~
dsjoerg
Upvoted comments without reading them

~~~
koja86
Damn, I wish I could unread yours so I could meet my daily duplicates quota.

------
Taylor_OD
Didn't read.

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antoineMoPa
Can someone please make a TL;DR?

~~~
koja86
DR.

