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As I read this piece I was able to predict the direction it would go and the evidence that would be presented for each opinion. By the end I had been neither su

As I read this piece I was able to predict the direction it would go and the evidence that would be presented for each opinion. By the end I had been neither surprised nor enlightened by anything presented in it. The author likes old books, dislikes digital reading devices and audiobooks, dislikes most things written since his own birth unless they were written about the western canon or by people trained entirely in the canon, is uninterested in reading books from other cultural traditions, and is completely self-satisfied with his extensive and erudite form of intellectual provincialism. It is an infuriating piece that describes a small mind that looks large to the consciousness inside it. I would propose this alternate subtitle: "How Reading the Western Canon Allowed Me to Achieve an Entirely Unremarkable Relationship with Culture and Thought" If you haven't read the article yet I'd recommend you not bother.

ziroshima 8y ago
While I agree with you generally, that you take such offense to the article is bizarre. Infuriating? Really?
newdayrising 8y ago
You sound far more motivated by bias than the author. At least he makes it pretty clear that his is an opinion.
- sanderjd 8y ago
  The parent comment seems pretty clearly an opinion as well. But this is why I often end up writing "I think" and "I believe" even though people often say to avoid doing so: I'm always afraid that if I don't someone will accuse me of stating fact without evidence when I only mean to be expressing opinion.
  - thisiszilff 8y ago
    I believe the rule is to avoid it when you're trying to persuade because by default it makes you sound less convincing.nif you're just discussing, then to hell with the rule.
roymurdock 8y ago
I like the bitter passion. Who would u recommend to read outside the unremarkable western canon?
- ekphrasis 8y ago
  A few tips: ”One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ”Things fall apart” by Chinua Achebe, ”Wide Sargasso sea” by Jean Rhys, poetry by Anna Achmatova, ”My life in the bush of ghosts” by Amos Tutuola, ”A personal matter” by Kenzaburo Oe, ”Woman in the dunes” by Kobo Abe, ”The grass is singing" by Doris Lessing.
  - 1123581321 8y ago
    Most of these are contemporary works in, or in response to, western literature.
komali2 8y ago
Similar thoughts here. Furthermore, the author's writing style is annoyingly old fashioned and unnecessarily long. >Like the man—the fellow with the name Solomon, writing under the pen name Ecclesiastes—said, “Of the making of many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh Why not just "Solomon, writing under the pen name 'Ecclesiastes', said..."? > I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. What was the point of this? Why not just "reading is my hobby"? > But for the road to acquiring the body of unspecialized knowledge that sometimes goes by the name of general culture, sometimes known as the pursuit of wisdom, no map, no blueprint, no plan, no shortcut exists, nor, as I hope to make plain, could it. Had to read this 3 times to parse the grammar.
- Jtsummers 8y ago
  > > I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. > What was the point of this? Why not just "reading is my hobby"? The point was that he considered reading a "hobby" as much as breathing for himself. You have to include the rest of that paragraph though to see it: > I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. Reading happens to be my hobby, too, along with peristalsis and respiration.
  - sanderjd 8y ago
    I don't really want to pile on, but the irritating part is "whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history". It's still irritating in the context of the paragraph you quoted.
    - Jtsummers 8y ago
      > “I may be a man of fairly wide reading, but I retain nothing.” Retention of everything one reads, along with being mentally impossible, would only crowd and ultimately cramp one’s mind. From later in the article. I took the "whose name is now as lost" as a forward reference to the later concept. Reading so much that specific facts are lost (like who he was quoting) while retaining the understanding of the quote itself.
ACow_Adonis 8y ago
I for one read the whole thing and find it enjoyable. I do not agree with his position on western literature, and he is clearly deliberately writing for people who already have some level of understanding of western literature and his Jewish heritage, but style wise I found it quite respectable, if not moderately haughty...
bloat 8y ago
I don't know how restricting yourself to the western canon makes you small minded. The western canon is, of course, huge and enormously varied. In any case, I didn't get the impression he was restricting himself. He describes going into book shops picking up any book he happened to light upon. My feeling was that he had decided not to beat himself up if these books did not encompass everything in the entire world. After all, isn't that the central premise - life is short? Your alternative subtitle is unnecessarily mean-spirited. I don't believe he was claiming to be in any way remarkable, in the end he was simply describing how he loves books.
- unstuckdev 8y ago
  Conceits creep in if you only read one perspective. Think about all the people who think Western culture is the source of all civilization because they only read things that affirm that view. Any given culture's canon is big in volume, but small in context.
  - colonelpopcorn 8y ago
    Still, I imagine it's better to read your culture's canon of thought only than none at all. Obviously you're not going to get a diverse perspective on life that way, but you might get a perspective that isn't totally informed by id or media.
    - ycombinete 8y ago
      Not only that, but the “Western Canon”, is most certainly not written by one culture.
ffwacom 8y ago
Oo la la, someone’s getting laid in college
LearnerHerzog 8y ago
Exactly my thoughts. The article is nothing but pretentious.
atypicaluser 8y ago
You missed the point of the article entirely. The Bookish Life--obviously this will discuss a life built around books. Yeah, yeah, anyone could guess how it would end, i.e. there's little fortune in it. How to Read and Why--interest. Purely so. You read slow because of your interest, you read because of your interest. Just as a foodie eats a dessert slowly because of his interest, he eats because of his interest. That a book-ie and a foodie would prefer one set of books or foods over another or over all others doesn't make the person less of a lover of their books or foods. That a foodie might prefer chopsticks over silverware, fingers or tortillas doesn't make their palate any less exquisite. Tell me--would you consider Isaac Newton and Fyoder Dostoevsky small-minded because they tended to keep their reading Euro-centric as well? And would I be right to charge anyone who hasn't the faintest interest in the Dalit literature of India or Japan, or in Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter, or in the depths of Borges' poetry, etc., to be merely provincial? Or am I just being smug regarding my reading habits? I recommend you re-read the piece with a little less hostility.
Emma_Goldman 8y ago
1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that people find it easier to navigate and remember from the printed page. 2) Yes we should all seek to learn about other cultures and expand our horizons. But that hardly makes all of Western thought 'small' and 'provincial'. You are simply aping the view you are complaining about, only in the diametrically opposite direction. Seriously learning about how the great minds of the past understood their world is, often, just as good a way of expanding our horizons, as reading from other cultures in the present. We are stretched by space and time. Finally, I don't think you're taking seriously the limits that language places on our breadth of reading. Very few professional intellectual historians - let alone everyone else - know enough of the European languages to engage with anything but a small part of 'Western' thought. I agree that we should strive to read more in non-Western languages, but it's very tough going.
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
And your comment, instead, is incredibly helpful for me, because it saved me a few minutes of my life. Thanks for this. It reminds me that years ago I tried (unsuccessfully) to launch a "TL;DR" service for Hacker News articles. This is a small test I ran: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11193792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11193792

ziroshima 8y ago

While I agree with you generally, that you take such offense to the article is bizarre. Infuriating? Really?

newdayrising 8y ago

You sound far more motivated by bias than the author. At least he makes it pretty clear that his is an opinion.

sanderjd 8y ago
The parent comment seems pretty clearly an opinion as well. But this is why I often end up writing "I think" and "I believe" even though people often say to avoid doing so: I'm always afraid that if I don't someone will accuse me of stating fact without evidence when I only mean to be expressing opinion.
- thisiszilff 8y ago
  I believe the rule is to avoid it when you're trying to persuade because by default it makes you sound less convincing.nif you're just discussing, then to hell with the rule.

roymurdock 8y ago

I like the bitter passion. Who would u recommend to read outside the unremarkable western canon?

ekphrasis 8y ago
A few tips: ”One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ”Things fall apart” by Chinua Achebe, ”Wide Sargasso sea” by Jean Rhys, poetry by Anna Achmatova, ”My life in the bush of ghosts” by Amos Tutuola, ”A personal matter” by Kenzaburo Oe, ”Woman in the dunes” by Kobo Abe, ”The grass is singing" by Doris Lessing.
- 1123581321 8y ago
  Most of these are contemporary works in, or in response to, western literature.

komali2 8y ago

Similar thoughts here. Furthermore, the author's writing style is annoyingly old fashioned and unnecessarily long. >Like the man—the fellow with the name Solomon, writing under the pen name Ecclesiastes—said, “Of the making of many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh Why not just "Solomon, writing under the pen name 'Ecclesiastes', said..."? > I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. What was the point of this? Why not just "reading is my hobby"? > But for the road to acquiring the body of unspecialized knowledge that sometimes goes by the name of general culture, sometimes known as the pursuit of wisdom, no map, no blueprint, no plan, no shortcut exists, nor, as I hope to make plain, could it. Had to read this 3 times to parse the grammar.

Jtsummers 8y ago
> > I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. > What was the point of this? Why not just "reading is my hobby"? The point was that he considered reading a "hobby" as much as breathing for himself. You have to include the rest of that paragraph though to see it: > I recall some years ago a politician whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history who listed reading among his hobbies, along with fly-fishing and jogging. Reading happens to be my hobby, too, along with peristalsis and respiration.
- sanderjd 8y ago
  I don't really want to pile on, but the irritating part is "whose name is now as lost to me as it is to history". It's still irritating in the context of the paragraph you quoted.
  - Jtsummers 8y ago
    > “I may be a man of fairly wide reading, but I retain nothing.” Retention of everything one reads, along with being mentally impossible, would only crowd and ultimately cramp one’s mind. From later in the article. I took the "whose name is now as lost" as a forward reference to the later concept. Reading so much that specific facts are lost (like who he was quoting) while retaining the understanding of the quote itself.

ACow_Adonis 8y ago

I for one read the whole thing and find it enjoyable. I do not agree with his position on western literature, and he is clearly deliberately writing for people who already have some level of understanding of western literature and his Jewish heritage, but style wise I found it quite respectable, if not moderately haughty...

bloat 8y ago

I don't know how restricting yourself to the western canon makes you small minded. The western canon is, of course, huge and enormously varied. In any case, I didn't get the impression he was restricting himself. He describes going into book shops picking up any book he happened to light upon. My feeling was that he had decided not to beat himself up if these books did not encompass everything in the entire world. After all, isn't that the central premise - life is short? Your alternative subtitle is unnecessarily mean-spirited. I don't believe he was claiming to be in any way remarkable, in the end he was simply describing how he loves books.

unstuckdev 8y ago
Conceits creep in if you only read one perspective. Think about all the people who think Western culture is the source of all civilization because they only read things that affirm that view. Any given culture's canon is big in volume, but small in context.
- colonelpopcorn 8y ago
  Still, I imagine it's better to read your culture's canon of thought only than none at all. Obviously you're not going to get a diverse perspective on life that way, but you might get a perspective that isn't totally informed by id or media.
  - ycombinete 8y ago
    Not only that, but the “Western Canon”, is most certainly not written by one culture.

ffwacom 8y ago

Oo la la, someone’s getting laid in college

LearnerHerzog 8y ago

Exactly my thoughts. The article is nothing but pretentious.

atypicaluser 8y ago

You missed the point of the article entirely. The Bookish Life--obviously this will discuss a life built around books. Yeah, yeah, anyone could guess how it would end, i.e. there's little fortune in it. How to Read and Why--interest. Purely so. You read slow because of your interest, you read because of your interest. Just as a foodie eats a dessert slowly because of his interest, he eats because of his interest. That a book-ie and a foodie would prefer one set of books or foods over another or over all others doesn't make the person less of a lover of their books or foods. That a foodie might prefer chopsticks over silverware, fingers or tortillas doesn't make their palate any less exquisite. Tell me--would you consider Isaac Newton and Fyoder Dostoevsky small-minded because they tended to keep their reading Euro-centric as well? And would I be right to charge anyone who hasn't the faintest interest in the Dalit literature of India or Japan, or in Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter, or in the depths of Borges' poetry, etc., to be merely provincial? Or am I just being smug regarding my reading habits? I recommend you re-read the piece with a little less hostility.

Emma_Goldman 8y ago

1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that people find it easier to navigate and remember from the printed page. 2) Yes we should all seek to learn about other cultures and expand our horizons. But that hardly makes all of Western thought 'small' and 'provincial'. You are simply aping the view you are complaining about, only in the diametrically opposite direction. Seriously learning about how the great minds of the past understood their world is, often, just as good a way of expanding our horizons, as reading from other cultures in the present. We are stretched by space and time. Finally, I don't think you're taking seriously the limits that language places on our breadth of reading. Very few professional intellectual historians - let alone everyone else - know enough of the European languages to engage with anything but a small part of 'Western' thought. I agree that we should strive to read more in non-Western languages, but it's very tough going.

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

And your comment, instead, is incredibly helpful for me, because it saved me a few minutes of my life. Thanks for this. It reminds me that years ago I tried (unsuccessfully) to launch a "TL;DR" service for Hacker News articles. This is a small test I ran: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11193792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11193792