If you can't see some of the joy and humor in Dostoyevsky, more the pity. But he also smacks you across the face with some deadly serious stuff two pages over.
I'll admit, I've fallen prey to the "reading as validation" or "literature as self-improvement" mistakes, probably more than once. But hey, there's really no downside to that either, other than maybe you become an insufferable chore to be around at parties. I may or may not be speaking from experience . . .
Bravo, I really appreciate the sentiment here. The joy you're insisting on reminded me of a poem by Yeats that insists on joy in art, joy in the dreadful and tragic especially (a poem that even mentions a Hellenistic poet [about whom I know nothing]):
adore this—one my my most formative experiences as a reader was watching a teacher cry with laughter while reading poe, and something in my brain just clicked as i grasped that it simply wasn’t that serious!!
However true, which it is, and excellently true, I cannot feel this article to be much more than concession. On this topic you can only speak in tropes: silly young men and lifting, silly young women and auto-erotic set pieces, silly neeks and challenging novels. Of course we must all live in the world, but there's nothing to be done about us really, no hope at all, so I would say just let those of us who can find nothing better tear up novels for shelter.
Yes, I think I agree. I try to escape these setpieces, with the idea that literature is genuinely joyful, maybe a kind of joy that can surpass all this, but I'm not sure. I just don't want to be in this stupid fucking swamp for the rest of my life
I try to avoid speaking on discourse topics because you can only speak in tropes. Silly men, silly women, silly neeks, as you say. If you stay within these fields you can only ever speak in tropes. I'd like to imagine there's a way to lift everything beyond it, but maybe it cannot be done while engaging n the terms of the discourse
I think you do, at least, when you're focussing on the positive and indifferent pieces. And even in your discourse pieces it feels less stuck in the swamp and more a look down at the swamp instead. But yes, I don't really think there's a way to look up at this swamp, lift it up, etc.
That’s quite useful. I find all of this very loathsome so I think I’ll just not talk about it at all in future. No need to wade into something you can’t change or escape from
I love your point about The Metamorphosis being funny (although I haven’t read it, it’s just a silly concept and whenever I hear it I think of this book I read as a kid from the perspective of cockroach (Willy the Whitehouse Cockroach I believe it was called?) I do often find myself pleasantly surprised, when reading something that has, like, more merit, how funny these books ends up being. I think you can find the same value you do from reading by engaging with other things the way you would with a book. Books just kind of require that sort of thinking, but if you’re really into anything you’ll get that sorta of value out of it simply from the attention you pay. Also I’ve always terribly hated being asked to find themes and broad meaning. It just seems like the least interesting thing. Like you’ve bothered to read the whole book now you want to narrow it down to a couple of statements? Anyway, lovely article.
Moby Dick is another 'hard book' that is incredibly fun. Themes are an incredibly stupid way of thinking about books, because they are applied from outside inwards, and the genius of the novel is that it can generate its own terms and conditions from within. I think if you are talking about a novel, you should try and talk about it on the terms it sets. It's fine to talk about it with other theories and such but try to be interesting
I read this with the slow, guilty pleasure of someone savouring dessert after telling the waiter they are “too full for sweets.” You’re right, literature was never meant to be a gym membership for the soul. It was a festival, a scandal, a seduction. Homer was trying to enthral you, not improve you. Sophocles didn’t write Oedipus Rex to teach fifth-century Greeks how to be more virtuous citizens — he gave them horror, blood, and catharsis, and they begged for encores.
The disease you diagnose, the instrumentalisation of reading, feels like the final triumph of Calvinism over the human spirit: if it’s not useful to salvation (or status), it must be frivolous, and if it’s frivolous, it must be suspect. But joy, real, feral, unnecessary joy, is the highest justification. A page of Kafka can make you cackle like a drunk god if you read him without your AP Literature notes clanging in your skull.
You know what I think is missing? Public laughter over books. We have lost the rowdy, irreverent, participatory culture of reading. The 19th-century workers you mentioned were being edified AND they were laughing at Dickens’ absurdities, crying at his melodrama, jeering the villains aloud on the factory floor. Reading was a rowdy, public mess, not an act of moral hygiene.
Maybe literature will only start to feel alive again when we stop whispering about it in temples of improvement and start shouting about it in the streets. Maybe the next literary renaissance won’t be born from reverence, but from raucous, scandalous, joyful noise.
Great piece! I used to feel bad for not enjoying books that everyone said were masterpieces and forced myself to finish them, but at some point, you have to ask yourself why you read what you read. I don't want to prove anything, just enjoy a pleasurable activity like I did when I was a kid.... Also, my perspective changed a lot when I stopped using Goodreads and doing those absurd reading challenges that make you feel like books are chores to complete before a deadline or else you're lazy or ignorant (as you say, they feel like homework). Anyway, the funny thing is that now I read more than ever :)
If you can't see some of the joy and humor in Dostoyevsky, more the pity. But he also smacks you across the face with some deadly serious stuff two pages over.
I'll admit, I've fallen prey to the "reading as validation" or "literature as self-improvement" mistakes, probably more than once. But hey, there's really no downside to that either, other than maybe you become an insufferable chore to be around at parties. I may or may not be speaking from experience . . .
Bravo, I really appreciate the sentiment here. The joy you're insisting on reminded me of a poem by Yeats that insists on joy in art, joy in the dreadful and tragic especially (a poem that even mentions a Hellenistic poet [about whom I know nothing]):
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43297/lapis-lazuli
Fun read, thank you for sharing!
You truly have the gift of gab. I'm sold. Gonna read Wuthering Heights now since I've been putting it off for so long.
Thank you Tess my loyal follower
adore this—one my my most formative experiences as a reader was watching a teacher cry with laughter while reading poe, and something in my brain just clicked as i grasped that it simply wasn’t that serious!!
Important
Glad you agree
However true, which it is, and excellently true, I cannot feel this article to be much more than concession. On this topic you can only speak in tropes: silly young men and lifting, silly young women and auto-erotic set pieces, silly neeks and challenging novels. Of course we must all live in the world, but there's nothing to be done about us really, no hope at all, so I would say just let those of us who can find nothing better tear up novels for shelter.
Yes, I think I agree. I try to escape these setpieces, with the idea that literature is genuinely joyful, maybe a kind of joy that can surpass all this, but I'm not sure. I just don't want to be in this stupid fucking swamp for the rest of my life
I try to avoid speaking on discourse topics because you can only speak in tropes. Silly men, silly women, silly neeks, as you say. If you stay within these fields you can only ever speak in tropes. I'd like to imagine there's a way to lift everything beyond it, but maybe it cannot be done while engaging n the terms of the discourse
I think you do, at least, when you're focussing on the positive and indifferent pieces. And even in your discourse pieces it feels less stuck in the swamp and more a look down at the swamp instead. But yes, I don't really think there's a way to look up at this swamp, lift it up, etc.
That’s quite useful. I find all of this very loathsome so I think I’ll just not talk about it at all in future. No need to wade into something you can’t change or escape from
I love your point about The Metamorphosis being funny (although I haven’t read it, it’s just a silly concept and whenever I hear it I think of this book I read as a kid from the perspective of cockroach (Willy the Whitehouse Cockroach I believe it was called?) I do often find myself pleasantly surprised, when reading something that has, like, more merit, how funny these books ends up being. I think you can find the same value you do from reading by engaging with other things the way you would with a book. Books just kind of require that sort of thinking, but if you’re really into anything you’ll get that sorta of value out of it simply from the attention you pay. Also I’ve always terribly hated being asked to find themes and broad meaning. It just seems like the least interesting thing. Like you’ve bothered to read the whole book now you want to narrow it down to a couple of statements? Anyway, lovely article.
Moby Dick is another 'hard book' that is incredibly fun. Themes are an incredibly stupid way of thinking about books, because they are applied from outside inwards, and the genius of the novel is that it can generate its own terms and conditions from within. I think if you are talking about a novel, you should try and talk about it on the terms it sets. It's fine to talk about it with other theories and such but try to be interesting
I read this with the slow, guilty pleasure of someone savouring dessert after telling the waiter they are “too full for sweets.” You’re right, literature was never meant to be a gym membership for the soul. It was a festival, a scandal, a seduction. Homer was trying to enthral you, not improve you. Sophocles didn’t write Oedipus Rex to teach fifth-century Greeks how to be more virtuous citizens — he gave them horror, blood, and catharsis, and they begged for encores.
The disease you diagnose, the instrumentalisation of reading, feels like the final triumph of Calvinism over the human spirit: if it’s not useful to salvation (or status), it must be frivolous, and if it’s frivolous, it must be suspect. But joy, real, feral, unnecessary joy, is the highest justification. A page of Kafka can make you cackle like a drunk god if you read him without your AP Literature notes clanging in your skull.
You know what I think is missing? Public laughter over books. We have lost the rowdy, irreverent, participatory culture of reading. The 19th-century workers you mentioned were being edified AND they were laughing at Dickens’ absurdities, crying at his melodrama, jeering the villains aloud on the factory floor. Reading was a rowdy, public mess, not an act of moral hygiene.
Maybe literature will only start to feel alive again when we stop whispering about it in temples of improvement and start shouting about it in the streets. Maybe the next literary renaissance won’t be born from reverence, but from raucous, scandalous, joyful noise.
I really loved this piece!
Great piece! I used to feel bad for not enjoying books that everyone said were masterpieces and forced myself to finish them, but at some point, you have to ask yourself why you read what you read. I don't want to prove anything, just enjoy a pleasurable activity like I did when I was a kid.... Also, my perspective changed a lot when I stopped using Goodreads and doing those absurd reading challenges that make you feel like books are chores to complete before a deadline or else you're lazy or ignorant (as you say, they feel like homework). Anyway, the funny thing is that now I read more than ever :)