I'm so glad the piece resonated with you! I do think there's a lot of healthy identity exploration that goes on with literature/culture that can come out in these fan-type ways, and if you pressed me on that point I'd want to give a ton of leeway and grace for Figuring Shit Out in cringe ways.
So many of your notes resonated with me. I'll admit, with a good dose of shame, that I have been that annoying guy taking pride in self-developmental non-fiction 😂 This year I decided to take a hard turn and only read "difficult" classics and wow do I feel like I have wasted a lot of time flipping through the "Atomic Habits" of the world. So far I've made it through the Odyssey, East of Eden and Moby Dick. I expected them to be more cognitively challenging but did not anticipate to find all three to be so much fun.
Yes having a reading nook is a way to guarantee you'll read less because you'll only ever read when you're in your nook and now often are you gonna be in your nook! Weirdly I also love pop psychology books and have a post scheduled (coming out tomorrow) on the best way I've found to read more (basically, it's to just decrease the amount of fun absorbing things I do that aren't reading)
It's hard to share what I read with friends and family and usually I don't try. Last spring I was in a bar with a friend who is a genius tinkerer about a character that was just like him in George Rodenbach's The Bells of Bruges. The characters' goal was, before he died, to get all his restored clocks to chime at the same time. My friend found this moving. I was camping with friends a few days ago and while sitting by a river, told them about Henry James' short story "The Figure in the Carpet" (which I learned of from a Naomi Kanakia's article). I played up the wonderfully ridiculous parts, such as the woman novelist who only marries men who give her books good reviews. (I'm working on a Substack article about the story.) It never occurred to me that someone might think I was showing off. I have enough to be embarrassed about, so I hope that makes a good cover! A good book is so compelling that it for me excuses some jumping up and down about it.
"Still, I often reflect on scenes from literature when I'm thinking about difficult situations in my life. My confidantes have commented how often I'll explain a life decision or a personal viewpoint by referencing something in Middlemarch or Proust."
It's so interesting you say this about "jumping up and down!" because it's such a fannish thing to do. It's largely accepted between fans to be excited about a special thing they noticed or a new story dropping on AO3, or getting excited about scenes in the same huge novel everyone and their mother has read. It's almost as if we are longing for the fannish experience for the way literature actually works on us-- how, as literature lovers, we can expound infinitely on the ways a piece might influence us, the world, or even just the author -- and our loved ones stare on blankly.
This is the place where we can jump up and down with each other about how awesome literature is.
"I feel a healthy amount of shame about the "women's" books, and I think they should feel some shame too."
This line made me chuckle :D Unfortunately most of them take pride in it, especially the tech-productivity bros 😅 I used to read a fair share of personal development books, but it's a red flag if someone (usually a guy) tells me that's ALL they read and nothing else
i laughed out loud at the quote about businessmen and athletes being the most boring people alive :') i also appreciated the call-outs about how reading in and of itself doesn't make you a better person, as i'm often guilty of the "feel good morality" that i fall into when reflecting on characters
I salute your excitement. Maybe, after all, the best anyone can hope for is to be a perpetual amateur. As long as you're tackling something new (or something you forgot so well it might as well be new) you are still wending your way through the unknown. But that's just the ideal human condition, isn't it? Thank you.
I laughed at your description of pro athletes as the "dullest people alive" because it's often true. I always found it strange that they in particularly are often held up as role models for society. I watch my share of sports, but the interviews, even with players I like, are usually pretty excruciating and filled with cliches.
I mean, to get to that level an athlete has usually sacrificed a decade or more of their teens and twenties focusing on doing *one specific thing* very well, and this in most cases means that other areas of life have been neglected. Many of them exist within in a bubble of their sport and are the opposite of well-rounded. It's great for them to have found a passion and excelled, but it's hard to extrapolate their experiences into lessons that are applicable to the rest of us who don't live lives that are so intensely focused on one clear goal.
Yes! I firmly believe in reading what you enjoy! I shamelessly (and almost exclusively) consume YA fantasy fiction. I read a lot of dense writing for work and just do not want to think hard when I read for pleasure.
I’ve learned that people who read a lot of dense writing for pleasure probably do not do so for work. Good for them. And I don’t accept that somehow a book on business (don’t even get me started on how business is not a real academic discipline, how an MBA is just a money making endeavour for universities, how the average person does not need to read about business) is more informative or valuable than a book that constructs imaginative worlds and epic conflicts and relationships.
You know what book is still really just a great, entertaining read? Mutiny on the HMS Bounty. I read a threadbare copy the other day and it may not be great literature, but it still entertains from start to finish.
I had to give Dr Zhivago two separate tries, although the first time I gave it up within the first 60 or so pages. Push on, it is really one of the most wonderful books I have ever read.
Wow, you've articulated so much of my own feelings about reading! I actually am a recovering fandom person, and am now on the other side of interacting with my prior fandom with a cringing mode. I appreciate what it did for me, as it gave me an identity while I was not permitted to develop one of my own, but I've grown out of this approach to literature in general. I feel that I've found the people on Substack who actually understand what I'm going through, living in a pop-culture dominated world run by the high school geeks who never grew up into adult nerds! Being a nerd as an adult intellectual is a plurality of thought, not a devotion to one prevailing doctrine/novel/author/world.
Is there a cultural version of the terms polymath, polyglot? If so, that's me, I'm it.
I'm sure you've come across Andy Miller's The Year of Reading Dangerously. It's his "how I stopped worrying and came out as a lover of Great Books" reading memoir.
As for Dr Zhivago, I empathize. It might help to read Solzhenitsyn first, though I need to admit, I saw Dr. Zhivago on the tele after reading Solzhenitsyn. Weirdly motivated, I went to the library and found a translation of Dr. Zhivago. From Pasternak, I somehow found Chekhov and then decades later, I re-read Anna Karenina. I sometimes find the Russians difficult, but I liked Anna Karenina a lot the second time.
"It doesn’t have anything to do with the way you act in the world, the things you build, the way you treat people."
Really? I find quite a lot of my perspective and motivation on these things in books. My reading is less fiction and more history, philosophy, sociology, politics, architecture and urbanism, and arts.
I think that there are many people who do learn a subtler empathy and wisdom from books. But it is by no means guaranteed, and there are other ways to learn it.
One note or point I'd add is that the whole concept of great books as aspirational self-improvement project has had at least one really negative side effect: the often insecure, bad faith criticism not of classic books themselves but of their readers as performative, clout-chasing poseurs. You see this a lot from some genre readers who very easily dismiss books they haven't read as pretentious, unreadable, self-indulgent dribble.
Of course, this very much overlaps with broader cultural attitudes that put an ethical weight on pushing back against perceived elites.
Yeah, I hate this. I see it as coming out of both insecurity and incuriosity — a lack of interest in understanding people whose preferences are different from one's own.
And it's certainly not just books. For instance, think of the perception of classical music as elite/elitist compared to the reality of its niche status compared to the cultural and economic power of pop music. And to the reality that some people just love the music itself.
Classical music is an interesting one because I do think it partially deserves its unwanted "snob" reputation, but it enjoys pretty much zero cultural power.
A thought I had -- is some level of snobbery an inevitable byproduct of anything with a passionate niche audience?
I think about the incredible amount of gatekeeping in "lowbrow" fandoms such as gaming, heavy metal, comics, Star Wars, etc. Perhaps this gets at the reality, much bigger than media, that being part of a community necessarily creates some level of insider-outsider conflict. CS Lewis wrote a great essay about this.
Yeah, I think you're right that anything with a group of passionate enthusiasts is going to have a lot of snobbery spring up around it — probably what generally happens when people's identities get wrapped up in whatever thing. With more "highbrow" pursuits, though, they've never had to defend themselves (until very recently) from claims of worthlessness or unseriousness. They've enjoyed a considerable amount of official institutional support.
This is a great analogy. I personally love modern pop music, which would be a surprise to my snobbier younger self. I also unapologetically love opera. I feel a sense of disdain on either side of the argument: with people who only listen to classical or believe modern music is garbage, I feel like they see me as inferior. With those who believe classical music is elitist and pretentious, I question my own interest in the music itself (am I really just a big old snob?). I highly dislike contemporary genre fiction, especially ones pumped out of the factory like dollar bills, but I want other people to be able to enjoy what I cannot! How could I ever get someone to read what I believe is the good stuff if I can't believe in theirs?
Mostly what I want out of books or any kind of narrative entertainment is to feel like I've been served a meal. I don't like when it turns out to be junk food.
I once told a work colleague (Male, White, 40ish) that I liked to read. Then he asked me for a book recommendation. I don’t like offering book recommendations since my reading taste generally consists of books people didn’t read off their summer reading lists in high school and people (Americans anyway) tend to feel some kinda way about reading lit when it’s not required reading. But hey, he asked. So I offered the last book that I finished which was Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi which I referred to as part of a “reading project”. The “reading project” in this case had to do with tracing the Frankenstein narrative beyond its 18th century origins. “What’s a “reading project” he asked. And I instantly regretted dropping this heretofore private phrase. “It’s when I decide to read something from a book instead of on my phone”. Somehow I managed to feel ashamed of this entire encounter and regretted it. Your reflection here reminded me of it. (PS I wish I could make people read Transit of Venus)
Book recommendations are so fraught! When I know that my tastes are very different from someone else's, I usually figure they're just trying to make a connection/small talk and not worry too much or talk up something fun. A lot of people, for better or for worse, see reading as like homework — and in some cases that motivates them to read more, rather than avoid it, but concentrate on books they think they can learn something useful from or that will edify them in some way. A lot of my reading is like that too: reading because I think I might fill a gap in my knowledge. But when I follow the compass of my enjoyment it usually takes me to 19th century French novels.
I'm so glad the piece resonated with you! I do think there's a lot of healthy identity exploration that goes on with literature/culture that can come out in these fan-type ways, and if you pressed me on that point I'd want to give a ton of leeway and grace for Figuring Shit Out in cringe ways.
So many of your notes resonated with me. I'll admit, with a good dose of shame, that I have been that annoying guy taking pride in self-developmental non-fiction 😂 This year I decided to take a hard turn and only read "difficult" classics and wow do I feel like I have wasted a lot of time flipping through the "Atomic Habits" of the world. So far I've made it through the Odyssey, East of Eden and Moby Dick. I expected them to be more cognitively challenging but did not anticipate to find all three to be so much fun.
They are very much worth it, and worth returning to repeatedly. What will you be tackling next?
Infinite Jest! A bit scared about that one. 😬
Yes having a reading nook is a way to guarantee you'll read less because you'll only ever read when you're in your nook and now often are you gonna be in your nook! Weirdly I also love pop psychology books and have a post scheduled (coming out tomorrow) on the best way I've found to read more (basically, it's to just decrease the amount of fun absorbing things I do that aren't reading)
I look forward to reading that piece.
Naomi that piece is going to blow the lid off this place!!! I can feel it
LOL we'll see, it's kind of an odd one, but I appreciate the faith =]
It's hard to share what I read with friends and family and usually I don't try. Last spring I was in a bar with a friend who is a genius tinkerer about a character that was just like him in George Rodenbach's The Bells of Bruges. The characters' goal was, before he died, to get all his restored clocks to chime at the same time. My friend found this moving. I was camping with friends a few days ago and while sitting by a river, told them about Henry James' short story "The Figure in the Carpet" (which I learned of from a Naomi Kanakia's article). I played up the wonderfully ridiculous parts, such as the woman novelist who only marries men who give her books good reviews. (I'm working on a Substack article about the story.) It never occurred to me that someone might think I was showing off. I have enough to be embarrassed about, so I hope that makes a good cover! A good book is so compelling that it for me excuses some jumping up and down about it.
"Still, I often reflect on scenes from literature when I'm thinking about difficult situations in my life. My confidantes have commented how often I'll explain a life decision or a personal viewpoint by referencing something in Middlemarch or Proust."
This could be an interesting article.
Part of why I started writing this newsletter was to be able to jump up and down about the books I like!
I agree. At least in my life and in my circles, it's often difficult to even find someone who's read the same books that you have.
It's so interesting you say this about "jumping up and down!" because it's such a fannish thing to do. It's largely accepted between fans to be excited about a special thing they noticed or a new story dropping on AO3, or getting excited about scenes in the same huge novel everyone and their mother has read. It's almost as if we are longing for the fannish experience for the way literature actually works on us-- how, as literature lovers, we can expound infinitely on the ways a piece might influence us, the world, or even just the author -- and our loved ones stare on blankly.
This is the place where we can jump up and down with each other about how awesome literature is.
I think we like to be in love with something! And there's nothing wrong with that.
"I feel a healthy amount of shame about the "women's" books, and I think they should feel some shame too."
This line made me chuckle :D Unfortunately most of them take pride in it, especially the tech-productivity bros 😅 I used to read a fair share of personal development books, but it's a red flag if someone (usually a guy) tells me that's ALL they read and nothing else
Yeah, I have no idea why they brag about doing this. Sometimes they add in one of the pop-Stoicism books.
There are people in this world who are only interested in the kind of reading that they can perceive as useful. I've certainly met people like that.
i laughed out loud at the quote about businessmen and athletes being the most boring people alive :') i also appreciated the call-outs about how reading in and of itself doesn't make you a better person, as i'm often guilty of the "feel good morality" that i fall into when reflecting on characters
I salute your excitement. Maybe, after all, the best anyone can hope for is to be a perpetual amateur. As long as you're tackling something new (or something you forgot so well it might as well be new) you are still wending your way through the unknown. But that's just the ideal human condition, isn't it? Thank you.
I laughed at your description of pro athletes as the "dullest people alive" because it's often true. I always found it strange that they in particularly are often held up as role models for society. I watch my share of sports, but the interviews, even with players I like, are usually pretty excruciating and filled with cliches.
I mean, to get to that level an athlete has usually sacrificed a decade or more of their teens and twenties focusing on doing *one specific thing* very well, and this in most cases means that other areas of life have been neglected. Many of them exist within in a bubble of their sport and are the opposite of well-rounded. It's great for them to have found a passion and excelled, but it's hard to extrapolate their experiences into lessons that are applicable to the rest of us who don't live lives that are so intensely focused on one clear goal.
I'm sure you've seen the DFW essay on this subject! It's not an easy thing to make interesting.
I probably read it a long time ago! Maybe absorbed it. I will look it up again, it totally sounds like the sort of thing he would have written about.
Yes! I firmly believe in reading what you enjoy! I shamelessly (and almost exclusively) consume YA fantasy fiction. I read a lot of dense writing for work and just do not want to think hard when I read for pleasure.
I’ve learned that people who read a lot of dense writing for pleasure probably do not do so for work. Good for them. And I don’t accept that somehow a book on business (don’t even get me started on how business is not a real academic discipline, how an MBA is just a money making endeavour for universities, how the average person does not need to read about business) is more informative or valuable than a book that constructs imaginative worlds and epic conflicts and relationships.
You know what book is still really just a great, entertaining read? Mutiny on the HMS Bounty. I read a threadbare copy the other day and it may not be great literature, but it still entertains from start to finish.
I've heard amazing things about the Count of Monte Cristo too.
I had to give Dr Zhivago two separate tries, although the first time I gave it up within the first 60 or so pages. Push on, it is really one of the most wonderful books I have ever read.
Will renew efforts!
Wow, you've articulated so much of my own feelings about reading! I actually am a recovering fandom person, and am now on the other side of interacting with my prior fandom with a cringing mode. I appreciate what it did for me, as it gave me an identity while I was not permitted to develop one of my own, but I've grown out of this approach to literature in general. I feel that I've found the people on Substack who actually understand what I'm going through, living in a pop-culture dominated world run by the high school geeks who never grew up into adult nerds! Being a nerd as an adult intellectual is a plurality of thought, not a devotion to one prevailing doctrine/novel/author/world.
Is there a cultural version of the terms polymath, polyglot? If so, that's me, I'm it.
I'm sure you've come across Andy Miller's The Year of Reading Dangerously. It's his "how I stopped worrying and came out as a lover of Great Books" reading memoir.
I have not! I'll check it out.
I love #9!
As for Dr Zhivago, I empathize. It might help to read Solzhenitsyn first, though I need to admit, I saw Dr. Zhivago on the tele after reading Solzhenitsyn. Weirdly motivated, I went to the library and found a translation of Dr. Zhivago. From Pasternak, I somehow found Chekhov and then decades later, I re-read Anna Karenina. I sometimes find the Russians difficult, but I liked Anna Karenina a lot the second time.
I love Chekhov and Anna Karenina too — Chekhov is so compact and brutal. I'll keep pushing with Dr. Zhivago.
"It doesn’t have anything to do with the way you act in the world, the things you build, the way you treat people."
Really? I find quite a lot of my perspective and motivation on these things in books. My reading is less fiction and more history, philosophy, sociology, politics, architecture and urbanism, and arts.
I think that there are many people who do learn a subtler empathy and wisdom from books. But it is by no means guaranteed, and there are other ways to learn it.
One note or point I'd add is that the whole concept of great books as aspirational self-improvement project has had at least one really negative side effect: the often insecure, bad faith criticism not of classic books themselves but of their readers as performative, clout-chasing poseurs. You see this a lot from some genre readers who very easily dismiss books they haven't read as pretentious, unreadable, self-indulgent dribble.
Of course, this very much overlaps with broader cultural attitudes that put an ethical weight on pushing back against perceived elites.
Yeah, I hate this. I see it as coming out of both insecurity and incuriosity — a lack of interest in understanding people whose preferences are different from one's own.
And it's certainly not just books. For instance, think of the perception of classical music as elite/elitist compared to the reality of its niche status compared to the cultural and economic power of pop music. And to the reality that some people just love the music itself.
Classical music is an interesting one because I do think it partially deserves its unwanted "snob" reputation, but it enjoys pretty much zero cultural power.
A thought I had -- is some level of snobbery an inevitable byproduct of anything with a passionate niche audience?
I think about the incredible amount of gatekeeping in "lowbrow" fandoms such as gaming, heavy metal, comics, Star Wars, etc. Perhaps this gets at the reality, much bigger than media, that being part of a community necessarily creates some level of insider-outsider conflict. CS Lewis wrote a great essay about this.
Yeah, I think you're right that anything with a group of passionate enthusiasts is going to have a lot of snobbery spring up around it — probably what generally happens when people's identities get wrapped up in whatever thing. With more "highbrow" pursuits, though, they've never had to defend themselves (until very recently) from claims of worthlessness or unseriousness. They've enjoyed a considerable amount of official institutional support.
This is a great analogy. I personally love modern pop music, which would be a surprise to my snobbier younger self. I also unapologetically love opera. I feel a sense of disdain on either side of the argument: with people who only listen to classical or believe modern music is garbage, I feel like they see me as inferior. With those who believe classical music is elitist and pretentious, I question my own interest in the music itself (am I really just a big old snob?). I highly dislike contemporary genre fiction, especially ones pumped out of the factory like dollar bills, but I want other people to be able to enjoy what I cannot! How could I ever get someone to read what I believe is the good stuff if I can't believe in theirs?
Mostly what I want out of books or any kind of narrative entertainment is to feel like I've been served a meal. I don't like when it turns out to be junk food.
I once told a work colleague (Male, White, 40ish) that I liked to read. Then he asked me for a book recommendation. I don’t like offering book recommendations since my reading taste generally consists of books people didn’t read off their summer reading lists in high school and people (Americans anyway) tend to feel some kinda way about reading lit when it’s not required reading. But hey, he asked. So I offered the last book that I finished which was Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi which I referred to as part of a “reading project”. The “reading project” in this case had to do with tracing the Frankenstein narrative beyond its 18th century origins. “What’s a “reading project” he asked. And I instantly regretted dropping this heretofore private phrase. “It’s when I decide to read something from a book instead of on my phone”. Somehow I managed to feel ashamed of this entire encounter and regretted it. Your reflection here reminded me of it. (PS I wish I could make people read Transit of Venus)
Book recommendations are so fraught! When I know that my tastes are very different from someone else's, I usually figure they're just trying to make a connection/small talk and not worry too much or talk up something fun. A lot of people, for better or for worse, see reading as like homework — and in some cases that motivates them to read more, rather than avoid it, but concentrate on books they think they can learn something useful from or that will edify them in some way. A lot of my reading is like that too: reading because I think I might fill a gap in my knowledge. But when I follow the compass of my enjoyment it usually takes me to 19th century French novels.