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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

"Bookish" People

  
  

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slinky
08:55 / 03.03.06
ooo! ooo! *wriggles around with excitement* oh, i'm so new at this, i don't think i can structure my thoughts properly...

...i hate going into bookstores, because they have these brand new books on display with the centre pages folded over to show them off -just use a book stand! and yes, i do rearrange the book display. heh-heh-heh

i think that this respect that we have of books (depending on the type of book of course) is not just owing to cultural heritage, but because we personally enjoy books. And when we enjoy something, we expect other people to respect that and take offence when they dont.

if one has a passion for reading and wants to share the experiences, then that isn't snobbery. I guess from what I understood from Jack V's post, is it depends on why you read. if you read for pleasure, then good on you. if you read because you want to 'oneupmanship' someone, then you suck! And you've failed to really enjoy the book, which is kinda sad.

*jumps up and down some more i'm going to go away and calm down. want to think some more.
 
 
Smoothly
09:57 / 03.03.06
I do find that I enjoy spending my time with people who are interested in doing something, be it reading or sports or whatever. I've met some really nice people whose social lives consisted entirely of watching TV and getting drunk. I found them boring. - Nocturne

I'm interested by this idea that watching TV doesn't count as 'doing something', but maybe that's off-topic and better suited to this thread, as mentioned on page 1.

And when we enjoy something, we expect other people to respect that and take offence when they dont.

Well, not always. I like lots of sugar in my tea, Scrabble and Sundays in bed, but I don't take offense at those who don't.

if you read for pleasure, then good on you. if you read because you want to 'oneupmanship' someone, then you suck!

See this is the thing that I'm wondering about. If you read for pleasure then it seems like an odd thing to boast about (like my Lent example earlier).

And you've failed to really enjoy the book, which is kinda sad.

That might be sad, but also necessary if you want to derive some sense of superiority, I'd have thought. Is it possible to derive a feeling pride or smugness from merely indulging in something you enjoy?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
11:07 / 03.03.06
I don't know about superiority, but there are definitely books I've felt a sense of accomplishment for finishing, in much the same as I'd imagine you would after completing a particularly harsh and bloody marathon in the pissing wet rain. Marcel Proust, I am looking at you...
 
 
slinky
12:03 / 03.03.06
ta smoothly.

Well, not always. I like lots of sugar in my tea, Scrabble and Sundays in bed, but I don't take offense at those who don't.

no, but i'd imagine you wouldn't like it if people started saying things like Sundays in bed are for losers.

See this is the thing that I'm wondering about. If you read for pleasure then it seems like an odd thing to boast about (like my Lent example earlier).
and
Is it possible to derive a feeling pride or smugness from merely indulging in something you enjoy?

i wasn't claiming that people who read books boast about doing so, i was just stating my opinion regarding jack's point of view. obviously i didn't explain myself and i'm sorry for not doing so.

i think that those who read for pleasure don't actually feel superior to those who don't read at all. however, i do think that those who read in order to be 'better than the rest of those mucky commoners' would be feeling self-satisfied.

which actually raises another interesting issue - what role do self-help books play in this?

I wonder if people’s pride/feelings of superiority about reading, requires them to find the reading an effort

i wonder that too.

do you think that the harder it is to read something, the more likely you are to not even bother? i imagine the chocoholics don't look forwards to lent whereas the non chocolate addicts aren't really bothered?

Alex's grandma - there is a distinction between feeling proud/satisfied and feeling superior. as i understand it, you are challenging yourself when you are reading a difficult book. do you feel superior when other people read that book and give up half-way? (therefore challenging other people)
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
20:51 / 03.03.06
Stoatie, I’m interested. On the scale of killing rage, how would this situation compare with someone coming into the Comics section and saying the same? What about the DVD section ("Films, they’re boring.") etc?

No, that never really happened- the comics were upstairs and were what most poeple came for. And anyone with any sense would have bought their DVDs from somewhere else (anywhere else) where they were much cheaper.

Seriously, though, I think it was partly over-defensiveness about "my" department- I'd always wanted to work in a bookshop since I was a kid- and yes, partly down to what I already admitted was snobbishness.

A couple of years ago I was incredibly proud to boast that I never watched TV- this was largely due to the fact that I was living with someone for whom "is the TV off for any particular reason?" was a perfectly reasonable question, and "well, if there's nothing decent on, why not just try not watching instead of moaning about it?" was considered the height of rudeness. I'm okay with TV now, but it took me a while...

I think someone already made the football analogy- my football-crazy friends just don't get why I can't get into it. Some of them are more well-read than me. I think we need Venn diagrams.

C'mon. We NEED Venn diagrams. GIVE US the Venn diagrams.
 
 
Leidan
20:31 / 04.03.06
I often actually feel bad for reading alot; I'm surrounded - or surround myself - by mainly 'wordless' culture that often seems to me to be healthier and happier for not tying itself down to words and ideas... does anyone else have this; the feeling of loss of innocence that comes with the word? I guess this is bound up with 'intellectuals' and not being able to get in touch with the more rhythmic spontaneous side of life. I think Wittgenstein felt like this at one point; the film of his life at least presents him as telling his lover to give up academia and go work in a factory, as he would be happier.
 
 
This Sunday
21:25 / 04.03.06
It's that 'book' rather than any reading, doing in folks' rational superiority-conviction suppressors, I think. Between billboards and the internet and doing some shopping or trying to puzzle out what possessed anyone to do those hideous drained-out photos of a 'Wizard of Oz' Keira Knightley... the point is, we all read. All the damned time.
But books, compared to anything else we might need to decipher the letter-born meanings off? Books make us brilliant. Despite any obvious evidence might come our way.
I just heard someone, the other night, explain that they were superior to the non-book-reading masses, by reading Laurell K. Hamilton. To be fair, it would increase one's knowledge of werewolf and vampire sexual habits, but does it make her a smarter person?
I didn't grow up with a TV in the house. I did not really go to the movies a whole lot, either, as a kid. Now, I can look back and realize we simply didn't have any money for it (no videogame systems, either - someone just gave me my first, and only, gaming system, about a year ago), and one could usually, of course, go to a friend's house and watch something. Certain people still can't believe I don't retain their encyclopedic fact-storage of videotapes they exhausted in their early youth. Was I totally damaged by not having time to count the rebel soldiers in a single shot of 'Star Wars' or being able to hum the entire 'Robotech' theme song from memory?
Point: I read all the time. Addictively. Still do. And I can't see that it's made me a lick smarter than anybody else, or even, purely, myself. Before anyone argues in my favor, go look at some of my random postings here, and honestly, would a really intelligent (and if we were to posit a book-for-book intelligence increase, that'd be a whole lotta smart) ever really state some of the things I've come off with? And I mean the serious things, here, mind.
And, if I'm not the perfect sell for this, let's take a glance over to Harold 'Humans had Shakespeare, the rest are all alien monkey children' Bloom. Read a large number of books of some range? Sure. Superior to everybody else? He's entirely off his gourd. At least he comes off that way. Paranoid, desperate, and totally out of his tree to the point of determined ignorance, trying horribly hard to ignore every fact or factor that doesn't agree with him, convinced this whole queer, freaky, non-anglo mass (the majority of the entire planet) is waiting like a vindictive wave to crash over and drown him in resentment.
That's right, this mass-reader has developed a spurious and intense connection between 'resentment' and any perspective not his own.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
03:33 / 05.03.06
I often actually feel bad for reading alot; I'm surrounded - or surround myself - by mainly 'wordless' culture that often seems to me to be healthier and happier for not tying itself down to words and ideas... does anyone else have this; the feeling of loss of innocence that comes with the word?

This loss of innocence: is it an abstraction? Like suppose you see a couple hugging, and you're aware of all the infinite number of other hugging couples?
 
 
Triumvir
15:11 / 05.03.06
I often actually feel bad for reading alot; I'm surrounded - or surround myself - by mainly 'wordless' culture that often seems to me to be healthier and happier for not tying itself down to words and ideas... does anyone else have this; the feeling of loss of innocence that comes with the word? I guess this is bound up with 'intellectuals' and not being able to get in touch with the more rhythmic spontaneous side of life. I think Wittgenstein felt like this at one point; the film of his life at least presents him as telling his lover to give up academia and go work in a factory, as he would be happier.

What you are missing though, is that in this modern age, when people abandon "book learnin'," it isn't to lead a happy carefree life in which they get in toutch with their inner self. Our culture surrounds us with instant-gratification mechanisms, such as TV, the Internet, etc etc etc. People just abandon books and create an anti-intelectal culture because our society more and more discourages working for anything. Instead of puzzling through books to try to impose some sort of deeper meaning on our lives, we watch Jack Bauer save America from terrorists using nothing but a pair of high-voltage electrodes and a branding iron. Our problem is that in the anti-intelectual culture we have created, to those who are bookish, those who aren't seem like ignorant jerks, while to the book-haters, book-lovers seem to be pretentious snobs. This mutual animosity drives a wedge between the two groups, making for a society that is split into two equally bigoted and closed-minded groups.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
18:35 / 05.03.06
A lot of the time I could be reading books, though, is spent reading boards like this one, and learning about stuff I wouldn't necessarily think to look for in the bookshop or library.

That said, I do wish I spent more time reading books, as I know that when I die I won't have read a fraction of the cool stuff I'd like to. I remember a coversation with my mother about Borges' story "The Library Of Babel" which I've always found utterly wonderful. She said she'd always thought it was really depressing, because to imagine an infinite number of books was also to imagine an infinite amount of stuff that you would never live long enough to read.

But then, that's my mum for you.
 
 
Shrug
21:44 / 05.03.06
Like suppose you see a couple hugging, and you're aware of all the infinite number of other hugging couples?
------------------------------------------------------

This mutual animosity drives a wedge between the two groups, making for a society that is split into two equally bigoted and closed-minded groups.
-------------------------------------------------------

because to imagine an infinite number of books was also to imagine an infinite amount of stuff that you would never live long enough to read.

Regarding feelings of infinity or at least of overwhelming number, also that of polarisation and that of community created by the reading process:

It might be of some conversational relevance if we take Habermas and Anderson's example of the newspaper and, as it's easily analogous, make it applicable to books. Habermas saw the newspaper as an extension of face-to-face communication (or communication in the public sphere) through it's letters to the editor, reader questions, etc., a sort of printed continuous dialogue. In this the newspaper cemented a sense of community among a wide circle of people (community or nation).
Anderson, however, viewed the experience of reading a newspaper differently, in that people, while reading, were aware, in some inchoate sense, of the thousands of other people repeating that selfsame action. In this he attempted to illustrate some sort of created unity amongst the readers, an imagined community.

Does reading literature create an imagined community? Are you left aware of others of your like that have or are simultaneously reading a novel? And does this, perhaps, engender a feeling of superiority in some? Or at the very least, is there a type of nationalistic spirit created amongst readers? Is this subdivided again by genre or reading choice?

And as a sidebar: How does discussion in The Books Forum or on Barbelith as a whole play into your experience? (when considering community and the original question as posed by Legba Rex)
 
 
Shrug
21:45 / 05.03.06
P.s. Apologies for any misunderstanding of the core concepts behind Habermas and Anderson's theories. Also: Hegel had something to say about this too, if anyone can remember?
 
 
Leidan
23:52 / 05.03.06
This loss of innocence: is it an abstraction? Like suppose you see a couple hugging, and you're aware of all the infinite number of other hugging couples?

Sort of; knowledge of and the ability and practice of imagining the whole array of situations that are/could be better/different to this one certainly often leads to a lack of ability to truly be present in and appreciate the moment (and perhaps act in it), though for me it's also been very important in leading me to new places.

It's also a simple reference to innocence fading as you learn more I suppose... but more than that this kind of feeling is about the type of life you lead as a whole, the form it takes, the way it's structured; the infinite books of the tower of babel require infinite time to read, time which could be spent doing a lot of things - and what is the point at which the amount of reading becomes ridiculous? i.e. reading for six days a week and only 'living' for one of them...

As has been said several times now, a book is an investment, you're spending a big amount of time getting a vision of reality crammed into your brain that some would say has a dubious relationship to the everyday world; to use this knowledge often requires abstraction, detachment and seperation from people who don't share it with you.

Of course, in reality to feel guilty or inferior about reading alot is just as foolish as feeling superior for reading alot, but nevertheless those are the kind of thoughts that are associated with it when it does occur, for me.
 
 
Baobab Branches and Plastic
09:44 / 06.03.06
I don't have a television and haven't for about a year and a half now. I used to be quite snobby about it, 'low culture' and all that, but books are as diversionary as TV and once again it really depends on whether you're a passive or active participant in your own entertainment.

The tendency seems to be for most people (IMO) to be passive in regards to all media they consume. In my office (blurgh) whenever people talk about either books or television its in the same relatively uncritical ways. This isn't necessary a bad thing, not everything has to be a critical archaeology of the history of thought, what is dangerous of all media though is the effect of passively consuming opinion and perspectives.

Snobbery then i see as basically a failure to engage, which in a social sense can be considered 'passive' rather than active (even if it is a little aggresive) and to this end despite not having a television I try and engage with people about the subjects they're banging on about (and also not to seem like the 'high culture' bookish curmudgeon I probably am).

My reaction to statements like 'I never watch TV/read books/go to raves/take drugs/date feminists/drive on the sabbath/listen to sabbath/drive on the sabbath listening to sabbath with a sabbath t-shirt on' is usually 'why not'
 
 
This Sunday
17:16 / 06.03.06
There's always that thing Kennedy and Bush both stole: Some people ask 'why?' and I ask 'Why not?'
Wish I could remember which Victorian said that (supposedly) initially. But it stands. Most people seem to be responsive in an accusatory manner, few are analytical about it. I'd like to say I'm being analytical about things, but being honest about my reactions and some of the mad notions that just seem so utterly beautifully true to me... my extrapolations are probably a lot more reflexive than considered.
What scares me more than an audience maintaining passivity at interpretation, is writers, artists, et al, insisting that nobody should dare analyse or consider their work at anything further than face value. There should be a booth where three walls play three different David Lynch films all at once, a Patti Smith/John Cale mash-up vibrating from the back wall with heavy reverb, and it's all lit in soft purples from flourescent ceiling fixtures. It might not help to put these people into the box, but it'd be terribly entertaining and the rest of us could cobble up some great papers from it, surely.

I have a theory, however, about people who read at least semi-frequently, I'd like to try out here: They're less inclined to experience a film, play, story of any sort, and come out with a 'I don't think the ending is meant to be taken literally as really real.'
Sound about right? Is that, as I suspect, a truly illiterate statement? Illiteracy measured by frequency of insisiting "this fictional end to a fictional fiction is in fact more or less fictional than the rest and therefore distinct and separate and invalid"?
 
  

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