I Was Told To Read Lots. I Did. That Was A Mistake.
When reading just leads to more reading
After my post yesterday about deciding to liberate myself from the burden of too many books, the gods of synchronicity — not the distributors of the 1983 Police album but the little wise old beings that stir the pot of the common unconscious — saw my friend Ray Monk post on Facebook that he had lots of books he hadn’t read. What he posted, in fact, was this:
“If I had read half the books I own, I think I would be about ten times more knowledgeable….”
The logic of the remark may not be completely sound but the feeling that drove it certainly is. I may be embarking on a clear-out but the books written by Ray on my shelves — including his magnificent biography of Wittgenstein — will not be finding their way into the disposal pile, despite his lapse in logical rigour.
But Ray’s remark was not the only chime to echo my thoughts of yesterday. One of the comments below the post referenced Schopenhauer (Ray has that sort of following on Facebook). What the comment pointed to was Schopenhauer’s remark about the dangers of “for ever reading, never to be read”.
The original quotation is originally from Pope’s Dunciad and is used by good old Mutton Chop Schops in his Thinking For Oneself. That essay begins with these words:
“The largest library in disorder is not so useful as a smaller but orderly one…”
So, after baring my soul yesterday, it seems it’s open season on it. Schopenhauer really gets stuck into reading and readers in his essay. By the time he states that “It is sin against the Holy Spirit to frighten away one’s own original thoughts by taking up a book” there is a suspicion that a tongue may be planted firmly in cheek. I’m not sure Schopenhauer had much of a sense of humour, though. And I’m sure if he felt inclined towards irony it would be more Greek tragedy than Alanis Morisette.
But the point — whether made in jest, ironically, or in total seriousness — remains valid. (For me, at least, regardless of the fact that awareness of how my actions may work for or against the Holy Spirit plays no guiding principle in my life.)
It’s not that I have read so much that I have thought less. It is that I have read too much and have written less. Or nothing. From books I sought not only wisdom but the missing manual for life that I thought everyone else had been issued with. Was I off sick that day when they handed them out?
I have turned to books to learn how to live rather than trusted learning from experience. And as far as writing is concerned, I have failed to allow myself to do what Euan Semple in his excellent Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do calls writing myself into existence.
That’s what the aim of this might very well be. A daily post written and published to…. what? Change the focus from reading to writing? Find my voice? Discover how to live in a confusing world? A combination of all of these and more, perhaps.
