Blogging about books I haven't read

[robinturner]

My colleagues—and indeed a large part of my generation—often complain about how hard it is to get young people to read books. If Marx and Engels were to publish The Communist Manifesto today, there would be only two ways to get enough people to read it to start a mass movement:

1. rename it as "Harry Potter and the Communist Manifesto";*
2. break it down into small enough chunks to be circulated around FaceBook (preferably with a short video clip of a specter haunting Europe).

But, as this example shows, the problem isn't that "Johnny Can't Read" because either his brain has been mangled by progressive teachers or Marshall Macluhan's post-Gutenberg revolution has abolished the printed word. Yes, children, there was a time long ago when we thought everything would be on TV, so we wouldn't need to read: no SMS, no e-mail, no blogs, no FaceBook.

The complaint, then, is not really about how little young people read, but about what kind of things they read. But this too has a familiar ring. Back in the nineteenth century, the complaint was about "penny dreadfuls" and I vaguely recall Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey starting with a defence of the novel against those who dismissed it as a lower form of reading. I can imagine some Babylonian priest complaining "This so-called 'cuneiform' reduces young people's attention spans to that which can be impressed on a clay tablet."

Now we have Web 2.0 (or at least 2.0 beta), the complaining has moved on a stage further. Andrew Keen has stirred up an interesting controversy by complaining that this user-created web means that people will now be spending most of their reading time on works created by people very much like themselves: ignorant amateurs. His book The Cult of the Amateur claims that user-generated content is (as the book's subtitle puts it) "Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy". I haven't read the book yet** so I'm relying on Tim Dowling's review in The Guardian. Keen is, in his own words, "very uncomfortable with the radical altruism—in some ways it's a legacy of the hippy culture—that lies at the heart of Web 2.0; the idea that we're all happy to give it away. I don't think that's the case. I think the majority of us need to work for money." Well yes, most of us do. We also need to be careful how we spend the money that we work for, which is why we like free web content (and why young Victorians bought penny dreadfuls rather than guinea novels). On the other hand, if, like Jane Austen and Lord Byron, we choose to spend our spare time dabbling in literature, we do not feel guilty about putting professional writers out of work.

Speaking of Jane Austen, I recently committed lèse majesté on our department e-mail list by admitting that I didn't manage to get through any of her books until I was thirty, quoting Tom Shippey's opinion that she wrote about "boring people doing boring things". I also confessed to not having read anything by Eliot or Thackeray (actually not true—I forgot that I'd read The Rose and the Ring as a child). This produced an outraged response from one colleague: "If you haven't read and appreciated authors of the caliber of Jane Austen, Wm. Makepeace Thackeray and George Eliot, you've read nothing—and you do yourself no favors by publicly flaunting your ignorance." Ouch. Subsequent mails were a little more friendly, possibly because I redeemed myself by sprinkling my reply with references to Hardy, Conrad and Spenser (all of whom I have read, although I only got as far as Book IV of The Faerie Queene).

All of this was provoked by Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, another book that I haven't read, and probably wouldn't read even if it were free on the Web, since "Bayard's approach is Derridean" and the book contains lines like "saying we have read a book becomes essentially a form of metonymy." On the other hand (as I said in the post that provoked my literary excommunication) "as an English Literature graduate, I can testify that being able to talk about books you haven't read is a valuable skill. I coasted happily through many tutorials and seminars, discoursing sagely on authors I had never read … Now I need to find a way to communicate with my students about Harry Potter without having to read any books about the irritating little twerp."

Now I await comments along the lines of "If you haven't read and appreciated Harry Potter fanfic, you've read nothing."

 

* Sorry, that's not an entirely original joke, but I don't know the proper way to cite "something I heard on the radio and adapted a bit".
** That "yet" is to imply that I probably will, although in fact, I probably won't get round to it.

Comments

[karenhealey.livejournal.com]

Dude, it's one thing saying you've read something you haven't to pass a class, but not when you're teaching it.

Pick up the books and suffer through them. You owe it to your students.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, I don't teach nineteenth-century novels. The bulk of my teaching is first-year Eng-comp, and I choose my own texts. The only literature-based course I've taught is the one I've just finished on Tolkien, though my "Monsters" course included an extract from Dracula (now there's a nineteenth-century novel worth reading).

[karenhealey.livejournal.com]

No, no, not the boring ones, I meant the Potter. I assumed that "communicating with your students" about him meant you were teaching from it. Perhaps that was erroneous?

[solri.livejournal.com]

No, I don't use Potter books in my courses, but some of my students are fans, and they sometimes bring him up in class discussions or essays. For example, one essay topic was to compare Tolkien's concept of evil with that of any other imaginative writer, and that resulted in quite a few comparisons with Rowling.

[karenhealey.livejournal.com]

Ah! I misunderstood. My apologies.

[rodneyorpheus.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of an interview with J.G. Ballard many years ago, after he had won the Booker Prize for Empire of the Sun. A rather condescending bookish journalist asked: "So would you still consider yourself a Science Fiction author now, or would you rather be known as a *serious* author?"

To which Ballard fixed her with a withering stare and replied "Serious authors write books about Dick and Jane who live in the suburbs and have arguments over the colour of the curtains. Who gives a fuck about stuff like that any more? It's only Science Fiction that has any relevance."

Really, who gives a fuck about Jane Austen? If someone hasn't read Gene Wolfe, Tim Powers, Alan Moore, Norman Spinrad, Kim Stanley Robinson, then as far as I'm concerned I don't care if they've wanked off to the entire collection of the Bronte sisters, they still don't know squat about good literature.

People read WAY more today then they ever did. And there are more and better books being written than ever before.

As regards blogging "killing our culture"... ummm isn't culture the works that a society creates? In which case it's increased our culture exponentially. It may not be the *kind* of culture Mr. Keen likes, but I'd rather read LJ than his stupid book any day, so screw him.

In other words, the entire argument is bullshit spewed by an obsolete entrenched faction who (rightly) fear for their income. Next stop: would you like fries with that literay review sir?

[solri.livejournal.com]

I like the Ballard quotation; it reminded me of some of the stuff I read for my Tolkien course. A lot of critics wouldn't accept Tolkien simply because his novels weren't "about adultery in Knightsbridge" (unfortunately I can't remember who coined that phrase). Sure, you can write an entertaining novel about ordinary people doing ordinary things. If you're a genius, you can even say something profound while doing it, but the constraints of the classical novel are handcuffs for the imagination, and only a few really gifted authors can slip out of them. Sure, a lot of science fiction and fantasy is badly written, but if I have to read a badly written book, I'd rather read one that has aliens or vampires in it. Hell, the Dune novels aren't that well written, but they're still great to read because Herbert created an enthralling world and has some interesting things to say about it. If he'd stuck to chronicling his neighbours' affairs, he would have been unbearable.

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

My deep dark confession is that I've never made it through Moby-Dick.

But I did read The Rose and the Ring (faked my way through Vanity Fair), and I've always thought that would make a fun stage show. Maybe I'll adapt it someday.

Most of my time in the "cult of the amateur" is spend reading theater blogs, and I've found them quite helpful, for the most part. Of course, a key factor there is that they often originate in other cities, such as New York and Boston, where I'm not seeing the shows, so it's a way for me to get a sense of what's happening onstage in those towns. They haven't yet found a good way to get downloads to replace live theatrical performances.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I'm actually surprised that Moby Dick made it into the canon (at least in America—I don't think many British universities have it on their reading lists). It's a good yarn, but I was rather disappointed when I read the book after reading people gushing about it. I expected something like Heart of Darkness and got something more like Treasure Island.

[yetibuddy.livejournal.com]

So, you haven't read every book known to mankind. Darn you...darn you all to heck.

Bahhhh, sounds like elitist dickheadedness to me. No, that isn't a proper English word. Oh well.

Well, you better get on that...you had better read everything that must be read and appreciate it, or you might be verbally slapped in the face by another colleague.

If it helps, I haven't read any of the books that you have mentioned. I've read others. I've appreciated others. I've learned from others. Why so much emphasis on a certain stable of books?? It's crap I tell ya.

Baaaaa....

[solri.livejournal.com]

It's the CANON! You can't argue with the CANON!

Seriously though, I do think that there is a list of books that anyone who does an English degree should at least know about, even if they haven't actually read every word. If you're going to study literature, you need to know why Jane Austen marked an important turning point in the development of the novel - you just don't have to like her. It's like my other undergraduate subject, music: if I didn't know who Schönberg was, I'd be a poor excuse for a music graduate, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to his cacophonous crap.

[yetibuddy.livejournal.com]

But...why? There are millions of books, in millions of genres, in millions of languages. Why...these? It seems that the vision becomes so narrow when the core of the education needed in order to fulfill the needs for a degree are limited to a select list. Who decided on this list? Why? When? How?

[several-bees.livejournal.com]

Well, an English degree by definition deals with literature written in English, so that cuts out the "millions of languages" bit. And within that context, there just are books that are important with respect to what comes after them. It's not quite like science, you can't say "well this is important because it turned out to be TRUE", but you can say "well this is important because of the influence it had on a lot of English literature that came after it". If you want to study Theobold Von Newwriter's trilogy on an East London enchantress struggling to perform her spells in an environmentally friendly manner, A Green Witch in Greenwich, then you won't get very far if you need to recreate everything from first principles; knowing about where novels have come from and how they operate and why they operate that way provides a handy starting point.

The "canon" is both overvalued and undervalued at times, and it's just a shortcut to reaching this starting point and understanding its context. To understand Hercule Poirot it helps to see how he's a reaction (explicitly within the text) to Sherlock Holmes; and Holmes himself sets himself (again explicitly) against Dupin. Just because most characters aren't considerate enough to say "by the way I'm built on a legacy from Jane Austen BUT I'M DIFFERENT IN THIS INTERESTING WAY" doesn't mean they aren't.

It requires arbitrary choices to some degree, of course - deciding what the important influences on English literature are depends on what you've decided English literature is. But there are some writers whose influence keeps coming up, whatever path you want to take through the literature as a whole.

(I'm responding to this in an attempt to avoid work on a thesis in which I've just claimed that online fiction is good for people if not necessarily for art, and that it's better to have ten thousand people writing their own bad stories than reading one good book, incidentally).

[solri.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely - and I think it strengthens my point that while you need to know who Jane Austen was, you don't actually need to read one of her books to the end if you're not really interested in whether the heroine marries the dashing squire or the doting curate.

Actually, our brief intradepartmental exchange was just mirroring the kind of thing that goes on in Eng Lit departments (we're lang, not lit, by the way). On the one side, you have the Novel people. It doesn't matter if they're crusty old Great Tradition followers or younger types who flirt with Derrida and queer theory; they share a conviction that literature started with Austen (or maybe Stephenson, to stretch a point), that it's essentially about social relationships, and that introducing battles or monsters is somehow cheating. On the other side you get the Medievalists (like Shippey), who generally think that literature stopped with Spenser and started again with H.G. Wells. It's a bit like the analytic/continental divide in philosophy, and is equally likely to result in cat-fights at departmental parties. In the middle there are the Shakespeare scholars, who tend to remain aloof, smug in the knowledge that they are writing about the only writer who is worth writing about, and the Joyceans, who are a world unto themselves.

A Green Witch in Greenwich - someone really should write that book!

[yetibuddy.livejournal.com]

I was thinking, seeing as I wrote what I wrote last night while half asleep, that it may have come across harsh. That's not what I intended, so I apologize to everyone for that.

Anyway, I suppose, because I am not in the academic world,my viewpoint is different, and based largely on...nothing. Any exposure I have had the academic world has often left me asking so many questions. Why this? Why that? Why, for example, is Freud used as a reference so frequently in the humanities? Hasn't most of his theories been tossed out the window and been classified as junk? I hope so! I've had therapy based on his principles, and it WAS junk...:)

I mean, part of it is sheer ignorance, I will admit that. But, maybe a part of it is the fact that, being on the outside, it allows me to look at it from a different point of view? I don't know. But, yes, the academic world confuses me, and inspires so many questions. Why are certain authors and works put above others? Right now, my wife is beginning work on an author who seems to have had such a big influence on writing, both in her time period, and today, who remains fairly unknown. Well, if she did have this influence...then, why is her work pushed aside in favour of someone elses?

Anyway, I will end my rambling there...:) But, yes, just to clarify, I DO NOT, in anyway, know what I am talking about! :)

[solri.livejournal.com]

Why, for example, is Freud used as a reference so frequently in the humanities? Hasn't most of his theories been tossed out the window and been classified as junk?

That one puzzled me too. The only explanation I can think of that doesn't make a lot of Eng Lit professors look stupid is that while Freud failed fairly miserably in explaining the human mind, his theories are good at explaining some of its products; for example, real people don't have Oedipus complexes, but fictional protagonists do.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Most fanfic is indeed crap (just like most published novels, in fact), but occasionally you find some that is so well written you wonder why the author put so much care into writing about someone else's characters when they could easily have written original fiction.

[karenhealey.livejournal.com]

Because they wanted to.

It's not your fault, but I've heard that so many times that it makes me think violent thoughts. There are a lot of reasons why someone might prefer to write fanfic than original fic, or as well as, and the implication of "but you're easily good enough to write *real* stories!" is not as flattering as you might think.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Maybe I was hasty in my judgment, and also perhaps in my assumption that people who write fanfic don't also write original fiction. I love inventing worlds and characters, but am put off writing a novel because of the linguistic slog involved (all I ever managed was a bundle of short stories) but I suppose there are some people for whom the reverse is true. If I could team up with one of them, we could write a great fantasy epic!

[word-herder.livejournal.com]

My best friend studied under Tom Shippey, and she never mentioned this opinion. Maybe because she likes Austen...? I'm not particularly fond of Austen myself (except for the A&E version of Pride & Prejudice), so that made me laugh.

I really hate it when people get all snooty about the caliber of one's literary repertoire. Books that are hard to read aren't necessarily good literature.

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

I adore Austen and at least Middlemarch (and Gaskell), but when literate men tell me Austen doesn't say much to them, I won't argue. Middlemarch, though, is the best. I really enjoyed the recent Vanity Fair movie and got motivated to try to read the book again (I did finish it once, I don't know how), but it's really not worth it.