A request for a defense.

[perhapsican]

Have you ever had a non-reader or someone who doesn't love literature like you do, say to you something along the lines of: "There's nothing to English Literature. You can basically interpret a book however you like and no one can say you're wrong"? Or "isn't any book like the Bible? You can interpret it however you like"? Or "what's the point if there's no one right answer"?

Also, comments along this line: "You're going to miss out on so much in life if you've got your head stuck in a book all day." Or "You may know a lot from books, but I have experience." Or "There's a lot you can't learn from books, you know."

I have plenty of responses for sanctimonious, uninformed comments like these, but they're long and the person they're being said to probably isn't going to listen, anyway. Can someone come up with a really beautiful, concise little refutation for any of these absentminded statements?

Many thanks!

[Jaylon Wennings]

I'd recommend "so what?"

[Iain Sparrow]

Have you ever had a non-reader or someone who doesn't love literature like you do, say to you something along the lines of: "There's nothing to English Literature. You can basically interpret a book however you like and no one can say you're wrong"? Or "isn't any book like the Bible? You can interpret it however you like"? Or "what's the point if there's no one right answer"?

Also, comments along this line: "You're going to miss out on so much in life if you've got your head stuck in a book all day." Or "You may know a lot from books, but I have experience." Or "There's a lot you can't learn from books, you know."

I have plenty of responses for sanctimonious, uninformed comments like these, but they're long and the person they're being said to probably isn't going to listen, anyway. Can someone come up with a really beautiful, concise little refutation for any of these absentminded statements?

Many thanks!

uhm, you may want to first consider if there isn't some credence to what those people are saying?
In fact I agree with those who say "there's a lot you can't learn from books, you know"... I'll add, you can't live your life in books, or books can't replace real life. Literature is well and fine, I enjoy the hell out of it and always have... but it is a poor substitute for experience, for getting your hands dirty, and other more sensitive parts of your body dirty.:)

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

[Lykren]

Literature is well and fine, I enjoy the hell out of it and always have... but it is a poor substitute for experience

Literature is an experience.

[Iain Sparrow]

Literature is an experience.

So is masturbation.
Just not an experience that measures up to the real thing.

[Lykren]

The purpose of reading literature is not to re-create as best one can the sensations one would have if one was actually experiencing the events being described in the text. You don't read Heart of Darkness so you can know what it's like to travel down an African river in the jungle, or "Ode to a Nightingale" to recall what nightingales sound like. In other words, there's no point in saying literature does not measure up to the real thing, because it's not trying to measure up to the real thing.

Instead it (and the other arts) offer a unique experience. Arts like literature and painting are (often) representational, yes, but what they give us is not just an imitation of something real; instead they show us something real as a means of creating something new inside of us.

Think of music, which is non-representational. How does Coltrane's recording of 'My Favorite Things' measure up to the real thing? The question doesn't make sense, because it's obvious that the work is not a shadow of something it is trying to represent. The music is its own reason for existing. It doesn't exist to conjure up the idea of something better than itself.

[Pumpkin337]

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more
places you'll go.
— Dr. Seuss

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the
ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting
— Aldous Huxley

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
Bill Gates


How well he's read, to reason against reading!
William Shakespeare

[Iain Sparrow]

The purpose of reading literature is not to re-create as best one can the sensations one would have if one was actually experiencing the events being described in the text. You don't read Heart of Darkness so you can know what it's like to travel down an African river in the jungle, or "Ode to a Nightingale" to recall what nightingales sound like. In other words, there's no point in saying literature does not measure up to the real thing, because it's not trying to measure up to the real thing.

Instead it (and the other arts) offer a unique experience. Arts like literature and painting are (often) representational, yes, but what they give us is not just an imitation of something real; instead they show us something real as a means of creating something new inside of us.

Think of music, which is non-representational. How does Coltrane's recording of 'My Favorite Things' measure up to the real thing? The question doesn't make sense, because it's obvious that the work is not a shadow of something it is trying to represent. The music is its own reason for existing. It doesn't exist to conjure up the idea of something better than itself.

And I agree with most of that... but there's an intimacy I get from real life experiences that I've never found in books.

[Iain Sparrow]

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more
places you'll go.
— Dr. Seuss

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the
ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting
— Aldous Huxley

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
Bill Gates


How well he's read, to reason against reading!
William Shakespeare



“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little ****ed up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.”
― Groucho Marx

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

and my favorite...
“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
― Albert Einstein

[Lykren]

And I agree with most of that... but there's an intimacy I get from real life experiences that I've never found in books.

That's fine, of course. But your use of the phrase 'real life experiences' is still besides the point; books are an experience like any other, no more or less 'real'.

[Marbles]

Have you ever had a non-reader or someone who doesn't love literature like you do, say to you something along the lines of: "There's nothing to English Literature. You can basically interpret a book however you like and no one can say you're wrong"? Or "isn't any book like the Bible? You can interpret it however you like"? Or "what's the point if there's no one right answer"?

Also, comments along this line: "You're going to miss out on so much in life if you've got your head stuck in a book all day." Or "You may know a lot from books, but I have experience." Or "There's a lot you can't learn from books, you know."

I have plenty of responses for sanctimonious, uninformed comments like these, but they're long and the person they're being said to probably isn't going to listen, anyway. Can someone come up with a really beautiful, concise little refutation for any of these absentminded statements?

Many thanks!

This sort of talk is borne out of ignorance not knowledge, or experience. If a good reader had said these words I'd probably consider her objections and devise a response keeping in mind the comprehensive reading experience of my interlocutor - and heck, that'd be such an interesting, even enlightening, discussion. But when people who have hardly picked a book besides selectively reading their college texts and a couple of cheap romances dismiss serious reading as waste of time, say what you like to them, they do not posses a level of understanding to register your point of view and that of the serious readers of books of literature and other fields of knowledge. So, in my opinion, it is futile to try to make them see where you're coming from, and this is so because, by being non-readers, they themselves don't know where they are coming from.

And saying that you can interpret any book in any way you want is a load of balderdash and a solid proof that the person has absolutely no idea what they are on at. This comment alone is enough to show to them that their 'experience' of the real world hasn't taught them anything about how to approach knowledge contained in books - not just novels written in modern times but every book about everything that's out there and that which has advanced humanity to date.

I want to ask which real life experience they are talking about. Experience of working for a corporation? Experience of going out on weekends to get drunk? Experience of taking holidays to foreign countries? Of bungee jumping and skiing and hiking and snorkeling and dune bashing? Experience of running a charity program? Experience of constantly surrounded by a group of friends making small, inane talk? What exactly? And once they have answered it, I want to know how they think a person who is a serious reader misses out on these experiences. Unless you are an introvert recluse of the J.M. Coetzee variety, which comprise a very tiny, negligible group of people (and those recluses aren't necessarily so because of their reading/writing, but for other reasons), all other normal people who are also readers have the same kind of life experiences non-readers have. They work, they go to places, they travel, they make love, they cheat etc. So what are we missing out on? Unless you are some high up businessperson like Warren Buffet or a politician aspiring to run for the leadership of the country, or you're attempting around the world in 30 days on a single engine-powered jet, or you're the Queen of Jordan with her charity programs, in what way a non-reader has more experience than a reader, pray?


uhm, you may want to first consider if there isn't some credence to what those people are saying?
In fact I agree with those who say "there's a lot you can't learn from books, you know"... I'll add, you can't live your life in books, or books can't replace real life. Literature is well and fine, I enjoy the hell out of it and always have... but it is a poor substitute for experience, for getting your hands dirty, and other more sensitive parts of your body dirty.:)

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

This is a false dichotomy, Iain, as I have explained above. Putting real life experience up and against reading and vice versa is the way only of those who disdain the world of knowledge because they have been unable to partake of it. So they try to cover their shortcomings by making much of the sheep's daily routine which we all know consists of what.

There are some people who know that they don't know and there are some people who don't know that they don't know. Now, having a lot of experience of many things in life is a wonderful thing, I'm all for it, but those who put life experience at war with reading belong to the latter group.

'nuff said.

[JHG]

Agreed with Marbles - those who disagree with the pursuit of knowledge or artistic experience, disagree because they lack the intelligence and/or patience to join the pursuit. But we should not endorse the opposite, the book hoarder. The Good is somewhere in the middle, as usual.

[stlukesguild]

Books are the means to immortality: Plato lives forever, as do Dickens, and Dr. Seuss, Soames Forsyte, Jo March, Scrooge, Anna Karenina, and Vronsky. Over and over again Heathcliffe wanders the moor searching for his Cathy. Over and over again Ahab fights the whale.Through them we experience other times, other places, other lives. We manage to become much more than our own selves. The only dead are those who grow sere and shriveled within, unable to step outside their own lives and into those of others. Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.

-Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed my Life


Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us—for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of impulses only is given us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greater number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts at our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colors, and curious odors, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendor of our experience and its awful brevity, gathering all we are in one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about things we see and touch. What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own...

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biased by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! We are all condamnes as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve—les hommes sont tous condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows us know more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children of this world," in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure that it is passion, that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire for beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you promising frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.

-Walter Pater, Conclusion to The Renaissance

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

-William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

[Iain Sparrow]

Oh my, so much snobbery in this thread?

[stlukesguild]

There is a difference between snobbery and having certain standards and attempting to live up to these. It seems to me that what was described in the original post was a form of reverse snobbery... a sort of anti-intellectualism, which sneers at anything which requires intellect, or achieves a high standard. We've have seen examples of such increasingly in our culture in which academics and those who are passionate about learning are deemed as "geeks" and politicians can dismiss those who have graduated at the top of their class from a rigorous university as "un-American elitist snobs".

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0116/8412/products/20140721_store_large.jpg?v=1404402282

[Iain Sparrow]

There is a difference between snobbery and having certain standards and attempting to live up to these. It seems to me that what was described in the original post was a form of reverse snobbery... a sort of anti-intellectualism, which sneers at anything which requires intellect, or achieves a high standard. We've have seen examples of such increasingly in our culture in which academics and those who are passionate about learning are deemed as "geeks" and politicians can dismiss those who have graduated at the top of their class from a rigorous university as "un-American elitist snobs".

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0116/8412/products/20140721_store_large.jpg?v=1404402282

I try not to pigeonhole people like that.
If it's done to me, well who cares. If we are truly intellectuals around here, and we live to those higher standards you speak of, we shouldn't need the approval of others.

[Marbles]

Oh my, so much snobbery in this thread?

And what label would you apply to the attitude the opening poster is complaining about?

Come to think of it, these attacks are reserved only for literature and social sciences. I'll see if these people dare dismiss scientific research and scholarship with the excuse of real life experience and defend remaining on the margins of education.


If we are truly intellectuals around here, and we live to those higher standards you speak of, we shouldn't need the approval of others.

No, I don't think it's about needing approval of others; it's more about holding your ground when you are unreasonably attacked and dismissed by unqualified people who you know, know very little.

Everyone has a different context to their lives, different problems, opportunities, interests etc. It's fine by me if reading or aspiring to higher forms of education doesn't fit their particular life trajectory. I'm at home with the fact of life that everybody has a certain or special place in the bigger scheme of things and therefore I, personally, do not disdain people for not knowing but I disdain those who flaunt their not-knowing arrogantly.

[Iain Sparrow]

Everyone has a different context to their lives, different problems, opportunities, interests etc. It's fine by me if reading or aspiring to higher forms of education doesn't fit their particular life trajectory. I'm at home with the fact of life that everybody has a certain or special place in the bigger scheme of things and therefore I, personally, do not disdain people for not knowing but I disdain those who flaunt their not-knowing arrogantly.


Then my friend, you are no better than those you disdain.

[Marbles]

Then my friend, you are no better than those you disdain.

I don't see how. If someone is proud of their ignorance and make fun of those who strive to higher forms of education, how am I the same as them for criticising their behaviour?

[Ecurb]

Language is essential to humanity. When apes have been raised like human children, they are as capable and intelligent as the human babies until humans learn language, at which point the humans far outstrip the chimps and gorillas. Language not only offers humans a non-experiential way of learning about things -- it also offers an organized way of thinking about things. WE can even remember events more accurately if we put them into words.

Nonetheless, I think Anna Quinlen's "immortality" argument is a little silly. Plato does not live "forever" through his writings; the 2500 years his work has survived is a mere blink of the eye in terms of "forever". Walter Pater suggests that:


Great passions may give us this sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure that it is passion, that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire for beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most.

To each his own, I suppose. However, the "desire for beauty" need not be limited to an appreciation for art. Perhaps the best mountaineering book I've read (and I've read them all, almost) is Jonathon Waterman's "In the Shadow of Denali". One chapter is about the disastrous summer of 1991, when many climbers died on "Denali" (climbers call Mt. McKinley,the highest mountain in North America by its native name). Included in the death toll was Mugs Stump, one of the greatest Alaskan climbers and Waterman's friend. He fell into a crevasse. Waterman dreams about him:


In my dream about Mugs just after he died, he disapproves of my life with its lack of action and my brooding with words on paper.... He is disappointed that I am not going up Denali anymore, and he tries to talk me into a climbing trip that will last forever, with granite rasping our palms and frozen clouds coursing through our lungs.....

I've had other climbing friends echo these sentiments, decrying "armchair climbers", who read the books instead of visiting the mountains. Since I rarely climb anymore (well, I did do a decent route on Mt. Whitney's East Face recently) I can't quite agree. Like Marbles, I think it's a false dichotomy. Nonetheless, the refutation of the OP isn't all THAT simple. We appreciate climbing literature all the more from having done some climbing ourselves, and love stories all the more for having been in love.

[Iain Sparrow]

Language is essential to humanity. When apes have been raised like human children, they are as capable and intelligent as the human babies until humans learn language, at which point the humans far outstrip the chimps and gorillas. Language not only offers humans a non-experiential way of learning about things -- it also offers an organized way of thinking about things. WE can even remember events more accurately if we put them into words.

I totally agree with you... we essentially think in words. In fact each of us think in our native language and therefore cultural differences are important. A person who speaks French will tend to see the world slightly differently than say, a person speaking English, or Spanish, or whatever. Not only that, but the written word is what set humanity apart and put us on this road. For thousands and thousands of generations humanity was stuck, and very primitive... until the development of symbols that represented words and thoughts. It is generally agreed that true writing of language (not only numbers) was invented independently in at least two places: Mesopotamia (specifically, ancient Sumer) around 3200 BCE and Mesoamerica around 600 BCE. It's curious that after the invention of a written language, we humans catch fire and make more gains in the next thousand years than the previous 10,000.

[Marbles]

Martin Amis in Money drives the point home.

"Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how hard, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.

Emphasis mine.

Succinct, innit. . .

[Ecurb]

The "Sapir / Whorf Hypothesis" that "language has a tyranny on thought" is well known to anthroplogists. Sapir studied among the Inuit, who had 23 (or something like that) words for "snow", and he thought the Inuit actually saw snow differently from how we see it as a result.

The question is still being debated, but one famous experiment casts some doubt on Sapir /Whorf. Berlin and Kay did a study on color terms. They had some 160 cards, all of different colors, and asked native speakers of almost every language in the world to identify each color. From distant memory, the results were that languages varied between 11 and 3 different "basic" color terms ("basic" being defined by a certain level of statistical agreement among native speakers) English had 11, although American women could "agree" on 20.

Here's the interesting part: every language that divided the spectrum into the same NUMBER of basic color terms had the exact same basic colors. Those with 11 agreed on the same 11. Those with 6 agreed on the same 6. If language has a tyranny on thought, we might assume that this would NOT be the case. The results of this one experiment seem to suggest that a commonality of human perception has a tyranny on language, instead of the other way around.

[kelby_lake]

Literature (and other forms of art) teach us imaginative empathy and also open up our knowledge of other periods/cultures/social groups that we wouldn't encounter in our everyday lives. It's not a substitute for life but it can enrich our understanding and appreciation of it.

For the interpretation question, that is of course what makes art so interesting. How unfulfilling would life be if there was one correct answer to everything. Even science is full of interpretations and unanswered questions. Of course you could come up with really facetious interpretations but that does not prove anything.

I would scoff at the people who profess to have some sort of special knowledge of life. The ones who genuinely do don't have time to be telling other people.