A curmudgeon’s guide to erudition.

             I read an engagingly relevant article by Nick Hornby in Lit Hub, by way of McSweeny’s, about how his reading habits had changed as he’s aged.  Lamenting almost turning 60 (which made me yearn earnestly for this dubious misfortune) he went on to write about loads of obscure books, that all sounded great, and also reminded me there are far more well-read people in the world than I will ever be.

            But his greater point resonated – that ones tolerance for bad books wanes considerably as our allotted time on earth narrows.  I once felt a moral obligation to read a book I’m not enjoying to the end, especially works others had praised, assuming those judgments would prove out in the end.  They rarely did.  Now I drop a stinker faster than a hot skillet without a potholder, swifter than Usain Bolt on amphetamines, speedier than the electro-chemical arc between a pair of synapses, quicker than a guy caught in bed with his boss’s wife can make it to the window. 

            I did the same with a very well-written book, by an acclaimed author I like, not because it was bad, but because the story was just too dreary.  I looked at the remaining 200-plus pages of sadness and tragedy and said to myself, nah. 

 

            I also occasionally reread a book I know I’m going to like.  This is the equivalent of eating comfort food, say my wife’s chicken piccata, or turkey stuffing with homemade gravy or a cheese steak from Vito’s in Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania.  Though I do resist this urge, since there is likely another promising unread book waiting in the wings, specifically on my nightstand, that might add to my preferred canon.

            I read as many articles and commentaries as books these days, and apply the same rules.  If it’s poorly written, I move on immediately.  If it’s a bit clunky, but teaching me something, I hang in there, though only for so long.  Enjoying fine writing, while simultaneously learning something and feeling validated in ones own opinion, is a marvelous pleasure. 

            Hornby also noted that contemporary nonfiction can elicit the same joy and fulfillment as any splendid novel or short story.  Again, I agree whole-heartedly.  With the advent of New Journalism back in the 60s and 70s, nonfiction writers are now much better story tellers, and the reading public has rewarded them with strong enough sales to encourage the practice. 

          Though if you want to learn more about their progenitors, I recommend Winston Churchill, Freud, De Tocqueville and even Charles Darwin, who often got a bit in the weeds, but had a gift for narrative.  More recently, Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, (Simon Winchester, Walter Issacson and Bill Bryson, still with us), Norman Mailer (Armies of the Night – his fiction stinks), Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe.

             If you’re a young person trying to understand the vaunted world of great fiction, you might read things like Gravity’s Rainbow or Finnegan’s Wake.  These are books that make little sense to anyone but the authors, and for me, not worth the precious time to prove otherwise.  You can read The Crying of Lot 49, or Ulysses, and be better for it.  It’s a matter of wise curation.  I read all of Faulkner, and am glad about it, though I feel no irresistible urge to reread Absalom, Absalom! The time is better spent with Lee Child or Gillian Flynn.  Or Amor Towles.

            As with the depressing book by the fine nonfiction author, I just don’t want to slog through giant, dense tomes by towering heroes of Western literature.  I’m too old for that stuff.  Though I’m glad I did when I was still able to swim miles in open water, carry a full keg across a bar room floor and split two cord of wood in a few hours.

            I’m still very much in the market for enthralling books by people I’ve never heard of.  My hope is they’ll appear before me without too much searching, since I need to meter out my discretionary vitality.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.  If I don’t want to read the book, please don't hold it against me, and I'll return the favor.  You might even like Norman Mailer’s fiction, and that is your prerogative.  I might be fussier about books as I age, but my tolerance for other’s tastes has only become more expansive.  I’ve learned it’s a more pleasant attitude. 

Though at this point, I’ll politely acknowledge your enthusiasm for stuff I don’t like, and just move on.  Youth may be wasted on the young, but neither should one squander old age.