Reading and writing (or: the wisdom industry)

“Every great Poet is a Teacher; I wish either to be considered as a Teacher, or as nothing.” Wordsworth

I began reading Moby Dick about a month ago. I was immediately attracted to it by the inimitable first paragraph; it reminded me of the exuberant prose one finds in the likes of Johnson, Smollett, Beckett, or Nabokov. So I included the novel on a list I compiled of “Books I want to read during a much-needed year off.” I intended to work my way through the list, gradually but steadily, and I didn’t think the order in which I read the books would matter much. It would have been worthwhile just as long the experience afforded some enjoyment, in addition to being some serious reading I could take pride in when my year off ended.

Moby Dick, I’ve found, is a rather complex work. And that’s not merely because of the nautical slang I miss completely in this under-edited edition I’m reading from. Melville’s creation has an intricate metaphysical underpinning that demands repeated reading and prolonged consideration. I’ve put off reading it for a while now; I didn’t even make it halfway through the book. I’ve stalled because I don’t know how to strike the appropriate balance between two types of reading: reading for pleasure and the kind of reading that requires a good amount of intellectual heft.

Part of my problem is that I’ve come to expect that reading will afford a light entertainment, never seriously challenging my pre-conceived views, always coming easily and whenever I happen to be in the mood for “learning.” It’s like flipping the switch on the TV and expecting the knowledge to come pre-packaged, laid at your feet. I’ve been duped by all the publishers and the booksellers, what I would call the “wisdom industry,” which promises its consumers that deep knowledge is easily obtained, as long as you can afford their overpriced wares.

I find a similar problem when I come to produce these blog entries, or any writing generally. What do I expect people to get out of reading my blog postings? Is it in any way valuable for them to read my posts and say, “Ah yes, I felt that way once, I am glad to know that someone else feels that way too”? Shouldn’t I rather be challenging their old, stale ideas, and thus challenging myself to overcome my own?

I worry about such matters when I read Johannes’ blog entries. He typically writes about how bland American poetry has become, since (he believes) it has become merely a vehicle for intellectual posturing, preserving antiquated ideas of authorial finesse and ability. He once wrote this great line about how much of American poetry is designed to leave the reader with a meaningless feeling of “Ahh…” at the end of each lyric. I agree with him that this is a problem, and I wonder if that’s what I have come to expect from my reading. Do I approach a work of art, expecting it merely to reaffirm whatever preconceived notions I carry to the work, thus being no more than a light entertainment?

This possibility of teaching and learning seems to be a fundamental problem of literature. What we typically identify as literary irony is the situation where a character is ignorant of some crucial fact to which the audience has exclusive access. This discrepancy demands that you bring some pre-formed beliefs and views to the artwork; otherwise, you would have no frame of reference in order to judge the overall content of the work. But where does this conception of irony leave room for us to be taught by a work of art, if all we are meant to do is glance knowingly to the author when he presents us with his hapless characters? This glance assumes that the author and the reader are born, fully grown, and can simply live a life of contended, knowledgeable ease, passing their knowledge back and forth to one another in ever more “eloquent” and “creative” ways.

Sadly, I’ve come to believe that both reading and writing come from unschooled knowledge that’s an automatic gift at birth. I’m going to have to learn that reading takes as much diligence and hard work as writing, and that a true engagement with great literature is active, not passive. I used to identify an author’s skill with his eloquence, and mistook eloquence for profundity of thought. And when I desired to be a great writer, I thought that this would consist in training my rhetoric, so that people would admire me and want to listen, and that this would prove I had something important to say. I decided to be an English (and later, philosophy major) to obtain wisdom for this enterprise. And I thought that wisdom was something I could buy at Barnes and Noble.