P.Or Rex Fridman. The computer scientist turned podcaster wondered what he was doing when he tweeted on New Year’s Eve what has come to be known as “The List” of his 52 books he plans to read during 2023. Little did I know there was. , as Rex explained, it’s easy. one book a week. No genre in particular: classics, non-fiction, sci-fi, and everything in between — all based on recommendations. And finally, a strict timetable that starts on Monday and ends on Sunday.
You probably know what happened next. More than any other platform, Twitter seems to be attracting discouraged former high performers. I am desperate to find a way around it because I don’t have a school report with stellar grades. A role-reversal fantasy in which a misunderstood bookworm finally comes to bully a literal techie in his tenth year. It seems that this was their moment. They surreptitiously assured him that Rex’s list was “simple,” “embarrassing,” and “a fool’s idea of a smart man’s reading list.”
But all Friedman was doing was… challenging himself to read one book a week. Yes, some of the choices were a bit terrible, but one really terrible book (sapiens) out of 52 is not bad. Admittedly, there is something a little forced about this project, but in the first instance, I feel guilty that I haven’t read it yet, impressing my crush, or reading a book for Lionel. There are people Trilling told us to—only then do we fall completely under its spell? It seems Fridman can’t win. Twitter sneered, but you should have read most of the books on the list already.
Bullies become bullies and snobs become snobs.Still there teeth There is one oddity about Friedman’s plan. planned in advance am.
you Do you know what to read on May 17th this year? Of course, a lot depends on what you discover in between. And at each fork, it depends on what inspires you to move on. But Friedman has already decided to read the book in the third week of May. SiddharthaAnd the following week, sand dunesAnd the following week, frankenstein.
All this betrays a very modern, functionalist understanding of literature
All this betrays a very modern, functionalist understanding of literature. It doesn’t seem to Friedman the order in which he reads his books—it also occurred to him that something might come across on the way that would lure him down an entirely different literary path. No (he may change his list a bit, but it seems to be based on new recommendations). Instead, the book appears to him as an isolated, self-contained “chunk” of knowledge.
Much has been written about our modern Baconian conception of knowledge. We also tend to see learning simply as an accumulation of discrete facts that, when put together, give us a complete picture of reality. Friedman’s list takes this idea to its extreme. But the solution often suggested by his “liberal arts” critics is a return to a kind of “great book” education based on the canons of history’s most important works. Sure, it has a little more narrative structure to it, but it ultimately treats the book as something to “get it done.”
Take Clifton Fadiman’s book A new lifelong reading plan. Or Charles Van Doren’s The Joy of Reading: A Passionate Guide to 189 of the World’s Greatest Writers and Their Work, which also concludes with a “10-year reading plan”.or great books of the western world The series consists of 517 books, arranged in complete chronological order. These systems are perfectly admirable, but reading just to complete a ‘plan’ or ‘series’ is not enough to simply ‘improve vocabulary’, ‘relieve stress’, or ‘improve concentration’. I think it’s just as practical as reading it.
It’s the basic problem that’s missing.practical, if not functional, point of reading?
Obviously — and this is already where any kind of single overarching narrative inevitably fails — the answer inevitably varies from book to book, and certainly from fiction to non-fiction. I often read the latter for some reason, and that’s fine.But when it comes to fiction, we need a clear reassessment of why reading is worth it by itselfWe read for fun, joy, wisdom, and insights not found elsewhere. It is a uniquely rewarding experience neatly summed up in Nabokov’s account of reading Dickens.
All we have to do when reading Bleak House is relax and let our spine take over. We read by heart, but the seat of artistic pleasure lies between our shoulder blades. Arguably the best form of emotion. Worship your spine and its tingling. We are proud to be vertebrates. For we are vertebrates whose heads have been tilted by the fire of God. The brain follows only the spine, and the wick actually runs the entire length of the candle. If you can’t enjoy the shivers, if you can’t enjoy literature, give up everything and focus on comics, videos, and weekly magazines.
let me add. If you can’t enjoy that quiver, you should give up trolling your reading list, simply out of a sense of obligation.
Yet surely we still need to structure our reading somehow?One of the main (and perfectly justified) criticisms of Generation Internet is that its grasp of culture is becoming increasingly fragmented. Without proper education, we resort to picking up scraps here and there from the long, winding journey down a wormhole of Wikipedia hype, social media, and hyperlinks. what is there. On Twitter, smart, young, and ambitious writers share their latest magpie-like discoveries, including book snippets, exhibition snaps, and links to music. The results are often very comical.
Clearly, such haphazard and formless education, repeated over generations, would be disastrous. But I’m not sure the solution is to trample the true joys and enthusiasms on display with an endless list.
Instead, what we need is better historical knowledge. That is, a skeletal perception of the artistic past that each of us can pack meat into as we pursue what excites us in the present. Every child needs a proper and complete understanding of our cultural history. How and why the symphony developed. How and why figurative art gave way to abstraction. We need to broadly understand what we know. What we don’t do — So, at the right time, you’ll know exactly what to read, listen to, or watch next, and why. If Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy tickle your fancy now, stick with it.
Maybe easier said than done. But I think it’s a better approach than just treating good literature as a checklist. As for Rex, I hope he finds a book that really touches him sometime in mid-February. worship – For a year he spins off in a completely unexpected direction.
