Reading the Great Books will never be cool

Because it'll always involve trying too hard

A lot has changed in my lifetime. When I was younger, I listened to Ani DiFranco, who resolutely refused major-label offers because she wanted to stay indie. But now if an indie-label author like Deesha Philyaw inks a seven-fig deal with a big press, it's a cause for celebration. When I was younger, effort was derogated. You were supposed to write directly from the heart, fiction often had a purposefully sprawling, unmanicured look, a la David Foster Wallace or Douglas Coupland. Nowadays, you need to pretend you've labored over every single sentence--writers talk about sitting down for eight hours a day like Merve Emre or working over their books for ten years, like Junot Diaz. When I was a kid, women's clothes were boxy and unflattering, and you at least affected that you spent little time on personal appearance. Over the last fifteen years, looks became hyperfeminine—makeup usage increased, heels got taller, skirts higher, seemingly without end.

But one thing hasn't changed: it's still not cool to force yourself to like something. And since reading the Great Books inevitably involves some element of faking-it-till-you-make-it (i.e. pretending to yourself that you really for real are enjoying reading Proust), reading the Great Books will never be cool.

This is a result of two durable trends. It's not cool to be a snob. For a while in the 2000s and 2010s there was a vestige of snobbery surrounding indie or underground music, in particular, but that never truly extended to literature. For most of my life, the tendency has been the greater and greater acceptance of pop culture: in our high art, a large number of writers are explicitly influenced by commercial fiction, whether it's Quentin Tarantino and spaghetti westerns, Junot Diaz and fantasy novels, or Colson Whitehead and zombie fiction.

With the collapse of high and low, we've lost the raison d'etre for a person to consciously educate their taste: it's fine to like high art if that's your thing; if you just, you know, enjoy Proust more than you like George R.R. Martin. But why force yourself, if it's not natural?

The second trend is just a part of human nature: those on top of society tend to determine the fashions, and those on top will always find aspiration to be contemptible.

It took me a while to realize this. The thing is, 90 percent of Americans sympathize with the underdogs. Ninety percent of Americans, if they hear about a bank robber who stole two million bucks ten years ago and is still at large--they're happy, they don't want him to be caught. But our high culture is, by and large, composed of the other ten percent.

I don't really understand it. It's not something I can explain. I think maybe it's just insecurity? A lot of people in our high culture are strivers themselves: they were student-council presidents; they won essay contests; they got into the prestigious workshops; they won departmental honors for their senior thesis on depictions of Africans in Meiji-era Japanese woodcuts.

They want all of this to mean something. They don't really value things unless they're sanctioned, in some way, by society. It's odd because, in some way, you'd expect the upper echelons of society to value what is authentic: the learning and cultivation that is represented by all of these honors, but they're so insecure that part of them maybe doesn't believe there really is anything authentic underneath the awards.

As Freddie DeBoer has mentioned, the latest manifestation of this is that meritocrats now claim not to believe in the meritocracy. As in, they don't necessarily want a fairer meritocracy--they just don't believe in the whole concept of deserving and undeserving, good and bad, etc.

This puts you in a situation where the middle class does believe, on some level, that an authentic thing called cultivation exists, and they want to achieve that thing, but they don't know how, and there's no way to teach them, because the only people who could do it only believe a person is cultivated if they're also credentialed.

The middle class, as a result, gropes its way to cultivation on its own, but they often suffer missteps on the way. For instance, why would anyone who hasn't read Proust want to read through the six volumes of Knausgaard's struggles? Indeed, although I quite like Knausgaard's work (particularly the first and sixth volumes), the main objection to him is that he's simply a lower-quality imitation of Proust--I do not think Americans in fifty years will be reading Knausgaard.

Knausgaard is much more readable and less difficult than Proust, but less rewarding as well. The first volume is brilliant, especially the several hundred pages at the end where he cleans out his alcoholic dad's home. And the sixth volume is absolutely unhinged, in a truly brilliant way, with his groping around the idea of Hitler and what Hitler represents for masculinity. But the middle volumes are mostly filler. Proust only has one volume of filler (the fifth, which comprises *The Fugitive* and *The Cheat*, is eminently forgettable).

But it's precisely Knausgaard's relative accessibility that drives his popularity. He's difficult and time-consuming, but we have cultural referents--he's *about* things we can understand, like masculinity, fatherhood, and male shame. Maybe Proust had those things too for his original audience, but nowadays his work is completely disconnected, sociologically speaking, from any possible audience. Nothing like a French salon exists anymore, and even if it did, nobody in Proust's audience will ever scheme to meet the Duchesse de Guermantes and be introduced to her, nor find themselves appalled to discover that she regards them as a pest.

This situation resembles certain things in our modern life, but much less so than the situations in Knausgaard, like him worrying about the social dynamics at his kid's preschool or him having conflict with the neighbors at an apartment he is unable to leave because of a rent-control situation.¹

The key point is that Proust is simply more difficult and, hence, less immediately enjoyable.

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The central question of any independent study of literature is: How can I learn to enjoy reading this stuff?

There's no other difficulty. That's the beginning and end of it. If you already enjoyed reading the Great Books, you'd have read them already, so clearly some level of enjoyment is lacking at the outset.

We can phrase this lack in a number of ways. Most often it takes the form of overt boredom: we simply cannot concentrate on what's happening on the page. Other times, it takes the form of confusion. We have no idea what is going on! If we were to be quizzed on the basics of the book--What is the argument? Who are the characters? What is the plot?--we would not be able to answer the questions correctly.

But more often our feeling is mild enjoyment leavened with mild boredom and confusion. Which is to say, our primary experience of reading the Great Books, at least initially, is of a lack of the usual intensity we associate with entertainment.

When I started getting my own books out of the library, in around the fourth grade, I looked for one thing in a book. I wanted to be transported. I wanted to be swept away—to forget the world existed. And a lot of books did that for me! I used to reread some books every year, or even multiple times per year, simply because they were so transporting. Reading them wasn't difficult. It was easy. I enjoyed watching TV and playing video games, but reading never really competed with those forms of entertainment: I always had time to read. Managing the different entertainment modalities required no conscious choices: if I wanted to play SimCity, I booted up the computer; if I wanted to read Isaac Asimov, I went to my bookshelf.

And I think this remains my ideal. In an ideal world, I'd never have to make myself read.

But, over time, reading did fall by the wayside. In particular, new book discovery decreased. Although I always avidly paid attention to new video game releases, I had a period of three or four years at the end of middle and beginning of high school when I found it difficult to pick up new authors. My parents would take me to the bookstore--a popular weekend activity for our family--and I'd browse the sci-fi/fantasy shelf and just be bored. Nothing looked interesting. I wanted books that felt like the ones I'd enjoyed--adventure stories set in alternate worlds--but I'd read the first few pages, and I'd feel nothing.

Nonetheless, by any standards, I still read a lot. And reading was part of my identity. I was a reader. I think that during this time I tended to read further into my favorite author's backlists, and this is when I read something like thirty books each by Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffrey, etc.

When I was in middle school I got into Dungeons and Dragons and bought lots of D&D sourcebooks. One of them was a compilation, on five CDs, of 250 issues of the in-house D&D magazine, Dragon magazine. I read probably every single one of those issues--the possibility of inventing my own worlds slowly displaced living in other peoples'.

Dragon magazine also published short stories, and this was my first introduction to the story as a living form (previously I'd only read stories in fix-up compilations, where authors arrange their previously published stories into a series linked by shared characters or worlds). This led me to buy the best-sci-fi-of-the-year anthologies then edited by Gardner Dozois. And these anthologies turned me on to lots of new authors: Mike Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Lucius Shepard, Ted Chiang, and a number of others.

At this point, my reading was fatally infected by aspiration. I read no longer purely for pleasure, but out of ambition: I was going to be in these anthologies. I was going to be one of these names.

I think the difficulty and despair of many critics comes because they want all readers to perpetually exist in an unfallen state: they want there to be 'general' readers who simply imbibe Proust the way I used to imbibe Orson Scott Card, and for the same reason—because it transports them.

I think this occurs precisely because nowadays most critics all philosophically committed to the collapse of high and low--the idea that no genre is inherently better than any other--and we all have low-brow interests that we extol (it's rare to find a critic who doesn't sometimes write about, say, rap music or tentpole movies or comic books or sci-fi). We want high-brow literature to compete on the same plane as low-brow. We want it to give pleasure the same way that low culture gives pleasure. But if high-brow culture can compete on equal terms with low-brow--if it can transform and move people, make them cry and feel, the same way that a Colleen Hoover novel can, then why isn't high-brow stuff just as popular as a Colleen Hoover novel?

Well you can blame corporatization or the dumbing down of our culture, but the real answer is simple: you're never going to cry while reading Proust the way you'll cry at the end of a Colleen Hoover novel. You're never gonna be thrilled during Proust the way you'll be thrilled by Gone Girl. You'll never even be transported by Proust's sentences the way you'll be transported by the sight of a pretty woman or a sunset.

That's simply not what high-brow literature does.

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But now the critique becomes: does high-brow literature actually do anything? If it doesn't make us feel as intensely as low culture, then what does it do? And are we able to articulate what it does in a way that doesn't make us sound like frauds?

This is one reason we don't like to talk about trying to like something or trying to appreciate something. Because the result can sound very much like brainwashing. It's basically like this XKCD strip. Is reading Proust any different from five hundred frames of Joe Biden eating a sandwich?

I've experienced this myself--I'm sure all cultivated parents have--when watching the stuff my kid likes. I've developed strong opinions about the artistry of various kid's characters and kid's brands. Like my daughter loves this series of books, Llama Llama, and when I saw there was a new one out this year, I bought it, but the meter in the new one is awful--it's truly off. And the rhymes are really bad. The voice is all off. I've seriously considered writing the publisher a letter (the original author died, and this one is written by her nephew or something). Actually Simon Rich has a hilarious story about this, about a dad forced to watch live action Beauty and the Beast by his daughter, until finally he becomes obsessed with it.

It's certainly easier to justify spending years reading the Great Books if you have a philosophical belief that high culture is superior to low culture, but it's not altogether necessary. I think for me, initially, mere aspiration was enough. I didn’t want there to be anything I didn’t understand. I just had a hunger to know for myself. I already understood how accessible fiction worked—so all that was left was less-inaccessible fiction.

For my part, I am still torn on the idea of high and low culture. Part of me still believes the Great Books are simply a list of very good books. But I also think they tend to be difficult books--perhaps not at the time they were written, but nowadays the barrier imposed by a different diction and syntax make them harder to read than many contemporary books. If the Great Books are merely very good books, then it's hard to square the effort of reading them--why couldn't I find equally great contemporary books that are easier to read. Which is to say, why shouldn't I read Knausgaard instead of Proust?

So another part of me does very much want to buy into the high/low distinction; I want to say certain works are more difficult and give less immediate pleasure, and that is the point. The process of learning to appreciate them develops your taste. And what you lose in immediate pleasure you gain in increased sensitivity and attention to nuance. Can anyone name a character in Knausgaard besides Knausgaard himself? Perhaps his wife, Linda. Other than her, everyone is transient. Proust on the other hand is alive with characters: Bergotte, Vinteuil, Rachel, Odette, Swann, Baron de Charlus, the Duchess and the Madame de Guermantes, the grandma, Francois, Mme de Villeparisis, Norpois, Jupien, Charles Morel, the painter whose name I can't remember, and, oh my god, the Verdurins--they are classic! It is bursting with characters, bursting with life, but I think that's only possible because the book dialed down the narration, let it recede a bit, and let the content speak for itself, in a way that Knausgaard doesn't do. There is an immediate sacrifice in readability, but a long-term gain in complexity and meaning.

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When I first read Proust, it was slow going. The year was, I think, 2011, and I'd found the Lydia Davis translation of Swann’s Way in my local library. As I recall, I was frequently bored, and although in my Great Books reading I try to give up on a book if I’m too bored, it's also true that I'm highly motivated to push through, just to check the book off my list. I think if the middle chapter, Swann in Love, hadn't come along, with its comparatively faster pace, I might've given up. After that I kept reading because I knew some gay stuff was coming, and I think it wasn't until the third volume, Sodom and Gomorrah, that I truly experienced something approaching enjoyment. Nonetheless, I did have to pressure myself to finish. I realized pretty quickly that the amount of interconnection between the books was such that I had to read them in relatively short order if I wasn't going to be lost when a character recurred: reading Proust became my major project for that year.

Proust is an interesting example for me, because his novel is one of the few Great Books I've reread. Every year I reread one really big book, and I think in 2016 or 2017 the book I chose was Proust's. I read through all the volumes in a much shorter period of time, maybe two months, and my notes to myself are something like "Wow, do I actually...like this?" I'd always known that I liked Proust, and he'd certainly influenced my view of the world and particularly my view about what art ought to do, but I also remembered that the sense experience of reading him was not particularly pleasurable.

Whenever I've pushed myself to read something, I inevitably feel for a while as if I'm faking it. When I was reading Kant, it was such gibberish initially that I genuinely wondered if what I was doing even constituted reading. When I first started reading lyric poetry, I had the same sense: am I doing more than just passing my eyes over some words?

Not all reading is created equal. I do believe it is possible to read an author and gain nothing out of it. And I also think that if you enjoy reading something--genuinely enjoy reading it--then it is impossible to gain nothing from it. Enjoyment is very critical to the whole enterprise of reading for improvement. Enjoyment is the beginning and the end. You cannot learn from a book if you don't enjoy reading it, because the enjoyment itself constitutes evidence that you're learning from it.

To quote from one of my early love's, Orson Scott Card's Speaker For The Dead (his Hugo- and Nebula-winning sequel to hisHugo- and Nebula-winning debut, Ender's Game): "Once you know what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart." I think the opposite is also true: if you enjoy something, it's because some part of you is in sympathy with it. And without that enjoyment, there's no true sympathy.

Enjoyment is the signal that we are getting something from a book. And yet...when it comes to high culture, enjoyment isn't really the point. The point is to develop our own capacity to understand, you know, truth and beauty and goodness and humanity and all that junk.

But in learning to enjoy the book, you learn to get all that other stuff too.

And how, you might ask, do you learn to enjoy the book? Well, it's deeply uncool, but I think the simple answer is...you learn by trying. You read it with an open heart and open mind, and you trust that there is something deeper in this book, something that you ought to be able to see and understand. I think it's precisely that faith which we have the most difficulty giving, and yet...I think there's nothing more logical and intuitive than that something higher must exist. At one point I thought Orson Scott Card was at the height of literature; but eventually I knew on some level that he wasn't, which was why I started having so much trouble reading. The dissatisfaction with lower things is our signal to search for the higher.

One thing I haven't mentioned here is elitism. I certainly have an elitist outlook--some books are inherently better than others; and more-difficult things are likely to be better than easier ones. But at this time and place, an elitist outlook is a distinctly middle-class attitude! It's a mystery.

Anyway, I think a science fiction novel or a young adult novel can aspire to be great literature. I literally write sci-fi stories and young adult novels. I had a story in Analog magazine this year. Without a belief that some things are inherently better than others, there's no way to argue that a sci-fi novel should be ranked with the greatest in literature. If goodness is nothing other than a set of hermaneutic traditions, a set of ways of reading, then it is totally logical to think that someone who loves Proust might be justified in hating Ted Chiang. It's precisely because I believe that the worth of a work is inherent, rather than culturally constructed, that I am able to believe that a commercial novel could rank with the highest literature has to offer.

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Notes and Asides:

• I'm sure at some point I'll write an article that says the opposite of this: we shouldn't ever force ourselves to read something. I've abandoned plenty of books, deciding the time wasn't right for them. I think developing your taste is like strength-training. You've got to increase the weight gradually. At the same time, if you're not straining, you're not learning.

• This blog has been in operation something like two months and has gained 150 subscribers! That is insane. I blogged on Wordpress for something like fifteen, and I don't think I ever had 150 reading it.

• I had writer's block when I was trying to come up with this entry. That's never happened before for a blog post! It's a little scary to have readers, and for those readers to include some people with genuinely good taste. Part of the problem is I'm not used to thinking of blogging as real writing. I can spend a day working on a post and think, "God, I didn't do anything today." But that all changes now! This blog is now co-eval with my book-length projects. I am aiming to have public posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays and a paid post every other weekend.

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Currently Reading: Aristotle,The Politics. Decided that if the fascists were going to use this guy's thought to eradicate me, then I better hop to it and read some of him. I've never quite known what to make of Aristotle. On a rhetorical level, he's quite different from Plato. You can never quite pin down what Plato intends to say: he's wily, hops around a lot, and his work can support skepticism just as easily as it supports idealism. Aristotle is more empirical and more willing to make judgements in his own voice. Tried to write a blog post about this contrast, but failed several times.

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Articles I've Liked Recently

• The Chronicle had a long post on Betty Friedan. She's out of fashion because *The Feminine Mystique* is mostly about the problems of upper- and upper-middle-class women. That's true, but also who are we kidding--how many people who are interested in feminism are not upper- and upper-middle-class women? She's a fantastic writer: poetic and impassioned. When I read *The Feminine Mystique*, I was blown away. It remains a huge influence. She just spins a simple truth that I think all these alt-right and trad-wife people need to remember: a large number of women find it difficult to achieve fulfillment purely through their femininity. There is a true darkness to all this post-feminist critique. It's like, well, capitalism sucks, so women might as well stay home and make babies. No! Go watch *Mad Men*. Do you want to be Betty? No? Because you're not a child? Then be better and think better. I'm tired of people using their autonomy to run down the concept of autonomy.

• It's mostly just gossip, but I liked this rundown of why Rupert Murdoch fired Tucker Carlson. I also think Tucker is just a very interesting figure. It's so fascinating how he's tried to resurrect this 1920s style WASP nativism. He basically wants to be Charles Lindbergh. Utterly bizarre.

• Paywalled and old, but I was impressed by this Blake Smith exegesis on Habermas's politics. I love Habermas. He seems so humane and brilliant. He really seems able to salvage whatever is salvageable from German idealism and French post-modernism. But, yes, the political project of a post-national liberalism, a world liberalism, seems untenable. Nationalism is quite simply the most powerful force in our collective social life, much more powerful than any other ideology or economic system, and I don't think anyone can make a functioning society, in 2023, without nationalism.

• Everyone got really upset about this essay on Cool Girl Novelists. It's a real trend (I call them ingenue novels), but it's a bad essay. The author really ought to have found a single ingenue novel and just done a review of that book, instead of trying to formulate it as a trend.

1. The housing situation in Stockholm, where Knausgaard lives, is really fascinating.