I fell into this tautology during covid, mostly in terms of music: telling myself I’d learn a new tune with the goal of posting a halfway decent “recital” (recording) on Instagram. That got old real fast, and I realize we have to rediscover the intrinsic motivation that gives invaluable things their life affirming essence in the first place. We have to sublimate this urge to produce every passion.
Thanks for the honesty and practical advice. I only looked away from this article 3 times to see if Claude Code had finished its coding! I think I am lucky that I don't particularly like books, non-fiction or fiction; I like poetry. Poetry's great because you can put your mental blinders on short intense sessions, usually no more than half hour. About as long as a pickle-ball game. That's doable. However I do have one thing working against me: age. I remember when my father would just watch 1/3rd of a movie, then turn it off. He could be perfectly happy with the movie, but he got it, he's can fill in most of the blanks, it's fine. That's just life. You know a lot more at 60 than you did at 11. The craving for novelty is still there, but the novelty is not. So it makes you more impatient. And it makes it harder to concentrate.
To help you learn to read again as you did when you were 12 ie when your imagination lived inside the book you were reading, why not make yourself read a classic novel? Something like The Master and Margarita? Or The Power and the Glory? Or Anna Karenina? You would be reading for the deep pleasure of concentrating on the world view of a creative mind. This would be spiritually refreshing and help you control your screen time in the best possible way.
Well, it sounds like there were a lot of us on a similar ship sailing those waters, Sam. I actually quit grad school (Sociology and Political Science) for two years in order to flee to Europe (Greece) and read what I wanted, what I was starved for. The trigger was when I was reading Dylan Thomas on the quad lawn in spring and my thesis advisor came up asked what I was reading.
"Poetry," I said.
"So while the world is starving, you are contemplating your navel," he said.
I returned two years later to finish that degree. When I walked into the department, one faculty looked at me and squinted.
I can relate to a lot of this. I was a professional translator for about 15 years, and that had a depressive effect on my reading. I spent the whole day reading foreign texts and turning them into English texts, and when I was done with that, the last thing I wanted to do was read more text. Thankfully my current work/life balance is much better.
Also, in school I had a hard time reading assigned classic texts. I had a kind of inner resistance to assigned reading with its tight schedules and the One True Interpretation that some teachers are inclined to foist on you. It killed much of the fun of reading. I got the fun back later in life.
I'm amazed and intimidated by those Stackers who write year-end posts along the lines of "here are the best 50 books of the 7000 books I read this year." I couldn't do that even if I wanted to. And I don't want to really, because nowadays I regard reading mainly as a quest to find favorites I can return to repeatedly.
We lose the ability approximately maybe every eleven months? And it takes 8 or 11 days tobe able again after enforced fun of reading to be able to read more than 21 pages in a sitting. This is how it foes and wanes with me. Simple cast of characters in which maybe I prioritize comedic present abject neighbors over fictive Unferground men? In the 20th cent'y we read cereal boxes for breakfast. To take to heart what you imagine happening next is the glass bead game. A modicum of control is a word for it, since we all individually have noticed how social credit is a feast and famine exchange, maybe reading is like writing, i think they are the same thing, not frangible like money, not more willful than anything else, though Camus made solitude his bogeyman/bugabu " solitude is power" said he. Approximately the middle path reading seems to me.
I feel this one Sam, though a bit differently because I’m just that much older and thus had a chance to develop a reading habit longer before the brain-sucking devices took over. These days I go in binges, reading 2-4 books in a row, thinking “aha, I’ve found the groove again,” then I hit a dud and turn to my phone/iPad and I’ve lost the habit again for weeks, months. I just finished a book today … let’s hope that’s a good sign.
Not sure how often you read story collections, but three I thought were excellent - each so good I looked forward to reading the next story as if someone were handing me free money (my attention didn’t falter like spotty wifi, which it does too often): Lori Ostlund’s ARE YOU HAPPY?, Erika Krouse’s SAVE ME, STRANGER, and Eric Puchner’s MUSIC THROUGH THE FLOOR. (And wth, a fourth: Amy Stuber’s SAD GROWNUPS).
So great. You're one of the very best writers on here, Sam.
There are parallel stories – each different, all related – to tell about each limb of what used to be high culture: painting, architecture, opera, ballet, classical music. To build off your Woody Allen point, if you go back and watch those movies, people didn't only talk about reading; they also talked a LOT about Mahler and Titian and Götterdämmerung. You can see it also if you look at archives of the elite newspapers. In the 1960s they're rediscovering Mahler. Then they're debating Glenn Gould, or Steve Reich, or raving in the 1980s about late Beethoven string quartets. Some really seismic shift has happened sometime in the last 20-30 years that very few people are talking about.
I love the bit about memorizing passages of poetry and then forgetting them all. Christian Metz has a quite I love about how to deeply get movies (as a critic/theoretician) you need to hold the movie-loving side of yourself and forget it completely... Any chance you remember who the poet was?
The game changer for me was switching back to paper. For almost everything. Actual books and even work reading I print out. Theres a 'dead trees anxiety' if course but I share the articles back to friends or interested colleagues which fools me into worrying less.
On the 'reading helping writing' I get the influence concern but there has to be a way to split the difference of letting reading just build your intuition/reflexes as opposed to overpower your own voice and style no?
I fell into this tautology during covid, mostly in terms of music: telling myself I’d learn a new tune with the goal of posting a halfway decent “recital” (recording) on Instagram. That got old real fast, and I realize we have to rediscover the intrinsic motivation that gives invaluable things their life affirming essence in the first place. We have to sublimate this urge to produce every passion.
Thanks for the honesty and practical advice. I only looked away from this article 3 times to see if Claude Code had finished its coding! I think I am lucky that I don't particularly like books, non-fiction or fiction; I like poetry. Poetry's great because you can put your mental blinders on short intense sessions, usually no more than half hour. About as long as a pickle-ball game. That's doable. However I do have one thing working against me: age. I remember when my father would just watch 1/3rd of a movie, then turn it off. He could be perfectly happy with the movie, but he got it, he's can fill in most of the blanks, it's fine. That's just life. You know a lot more at 60 than you did at 11. The craving for novelty is still there, but the novelty is not. So it makes you more impatient. And it makes it harder to concentrate.
To help you learn to read again as you did when you were 12 ie when your imagination lived inside the book you were reading, why not make yourself read a classic novel? Something like The Master and Margarita? Or The Power and the Glory? Or Anna Karenina? You would be reading for the deep pleasure of concentrating on the world view of a creative mind. This would be spiritually refreshing and help you control your screen time in the best possible way.
Well, it sounds like there were a lot of us on a similar ship sailing those waters, Sam. I actually quit grad school (Sociology and Political Science) for two years in order to flee to Europe (Greece) and read what I wanted, what I was starved for. The trigger was when I was reading Dylan Thomas on the quad lawn in spring and my thesis advisor came up asked what I was reading.
"Poetry," I said.
"So while the world is starving, you are contemplating your navel," he said.
I returned two years later to finish that degree. When I walked into the department, one faculty looked at me and squinted.
"You've changed," he said.
The best attribute an article like this can have is honesty. You were honest.
I can relate to a lot of this. I was a professional translator for about 15 years, and that had a depressive effect on my reading. I spent the whole day reading foreign texts and turning them into English texts, and when I was done with that, the last thing I wanted to do was read more text. Thankfully my current work/life balance is much better.
Also, in school I had a hard time reading assigned classic texts. I had a kind of inner resistance to assigned reading with its tight schedules and the One True Interpretation that some teachers are inclined to foist on you. It killed much of the fun of reading. I got the fun back later in life.
I'm amazed and intimidated by those Stackers who write year-end posts along the lines of "here are the best 50 books of the 7000 books I read this year." I couldn't do that even if I wanted to. And I don't want to really, because nowadays I regard reading mainly as a quest to find favorites I can return to repeatedly.
We lose the ability approximately maybe every eleven months? And it takes 8 or 11 days tobe able again after enforced fun of reading to be able to read more than 21 pages in a sitting. This is how it foes and wanes with me. Simple cast of characters in which maybe I prioritize comedic present abject neighbors over fictive Unferground men? In the 20th cent'y we read cereal boxes for breakfast. To take to heart what you imagine happening next is the glass bead game. A modicum of control is a word for it, since we all individually have noticed how social credit is a feast and famine exchange, maybe reading is like writing, i think they are the same thing, not frangible like money, not more willful than anything else, though Camus made solitude his bogeyman/bugabu " solitude is power" said he. Approximately the middle path reading seems to me.
Mazel Tov!
I feel this one Sam, though a bit differently because I’m just that much older and thus had a chance to develop a reading habit longer before the brain-sucking devices took over. These days I go in binges, reading 2-4 books in a row, thinking “aha, I’ve found the groove again,” then I hit a dud and turn to my phone/iPad and I’ve lost the habit again for weeks, months. I just finished a book today … let’s hope that’s a good sign.
Not sure how often you read story collections, but three I thought were excellent - each so good I looked forward to reading the next story as if someone were handing me free money (my attention didn’t falter like spotty wifi, which it does too often): Lori Ostlund’s ARE YOU HAPPY?, Erika Krouse’s SAVE ME, STRANGER, and Eric Puchner’s MUSIC THROUGH THE FLOOR. (And wth, a fourth: Amy Stuber’s SAD GROWNUPS).
So great. You're one of the very best writers on here, Sam.
There are parallel stories – each different, all related – to tell about each limb of what used to be high culture: painting, architecture, opera, ballet, classical music. To build off your Woody Allen point, if you go back and watch those movies, people didn't only talk about reading; they also talked a LOT about Mahler and Titian and Götterdämmerung. You can see it also if you look at archives of the elite newspapers. In the 1960s they're rediscovering Mahler. Then they're debating Glenn Gould, or Steve Reich, or raving in the 1980s about late Beethoven string quartets. Some really seismic shift has happened sometime in the last 20-30 years that very few people are talking about.
I think this answers my question to why liberalism is decaying rapidly.
I love the bit about memorizing passages of poetry and then forgetting them all. Christian Metz has a quite I love about how to deeply get movies (as a critic/theoretician) you need to hold the movie-loving side of yourself and forget it completely... Any chance you remember who the poet was?
The game changer for me was switching back to paper. For almost everything. Actual books and even work reading I print out. Theres a 'dead trees anxiety' if course but I share the articles back to friends or interested colleagues which fools me into worrying less.
On the 'reading helping writing' I get the influence concern but there has to be a way to split the difference of letting reading just build your intuition/reflexes as opposed to overpower your own voice and style no?
Thanks a lot for the piece.