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FLATTER_THE_MARKS
November 19, 2021
One way I've put this:
What I might complain about-- but never do,
because I know it would do no good-- is a
fondness for books that make the reader *feel
smart* without having to work very hard.
There's a lot of very thin, positively
light-weight, work out there that attracts a
readership insistent on praising it for it's
Great Insight (though what they ofen seem to
mean is a kind of "reassurance"-- it tells
them they were right all along).
In more detail (or at least,
with more verbiage):
Many a book out there in the world strikes me
as relatively thin despite it's popularity.
But pretty obviously, that "thinness", the lack
of what *I* would call "substance" is a necessary
feature for it's popularity.
So far, so good-- far be it from me to
lightly dismiss "light" reading.
TAKEN_LIGHTLY
Where it gets puzzling is there's a large sub-set
of these books that are praised for their intelligence,
it's fans claim to see some great insights into a
work that rings a bit hollow to me.
Now, you could approach this situation with
warmth and understanding, and avoid being
insulting and dismissive about it... (But as I'm sure you've
guessed, I'm about to
Human reactions to art are bound to vary, reject this approach.)
and someone may get something from a work
that you don't, and just because that
work doesn't work *for you* is no reason
it shouldn't work for other people.
Maybe you're a highly educated, highly evolved
superior intelligence that has no need for those
elementary insights-- or maybe you're just someone
with a *different* background, and just by chance
you happen to have learned the lessons of the work
from somewhere else, and the people who I'm about
to be unfairly dismissive of may have learned
different lessons that still elude me.
But. What I really believe is that these books
are pitched low for wider appeal; they're designed
to be flattering: they leave the reader going
away feeling intelligent and virtuous without
actually making them think very hard.
MOBY_DICK
Naming names-- where this is
likely to get insulting and Maybe "Moby Dick" There are authors
contentious-- I tend to feel deserves to be in I'm largely
this way about most of Kurt this category... unwilling to even
Vonnegut, most of Ursula Le but I think it's in *look* at just
Guin. a class of its own. because I *suspect*
they're like this:
And-- the reason it occured
to me to write this now-- Phillip Roth
there's non-fiction books Margaret Atwood
like Douglas Hofstaders
"Goedel, Escher, Bach".
But then, those guys
Many people claim to find this were in love with
book remarkably illuminating-- Neal Stephenson's
I've seen young programmers at "Snow Crash"...
slashdot gushing over it. which strikes me as
readable and funny,
I thought it had some nice bits, but remarkably
but I gave up on it half-way derivative.
through with an "okay, I got
it already".
As a friend of mine commented
in the late-80s: "No one with
a technical background likes
that book."
But then, I think that was the first Similarly, there must
place I saw the proof in symbolic logic be something I picked
of the point that "from a contradiction, up from "Snow Crash"
anything follows". It's not like I that stays with me...
didn't get *anything* out of that book.
How about: the main
character gets a
bunch of portable
computer gear so he
can go shuffling
around like a zombie
while still online.
The cool skater punk
girl in the story
makes fun of him for
being a hopeless nerd.
PHONES_UBER_ALLES
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