...the late philosopher Richard Rorty wrote a powerful review essay of Umberto Eco's great book Foucault's Pendulum titled "The Pragmatist's Progess" where he talks about how one can read books like one does debate prep cutting and pasting 'evidence' for one's pre-judices or one can expose oneself to books (different life experiences/points of view) with the hope of having one's understanding/empathy/world widened.I haven't read the review, but I think that's such a good point about reading nonfiction. The airwaves\blogs\books\magazines are filled with fucking idiots who just cherry-pick to make cliche point after cliche point.
I shouldn't call them "fucking idiots." Humans have a deep-seated desire to have their views confirmed by people who they perceive to be more articulate than them. Thus there is some money to be made talking, but not as much listening. And yet it's the listening that gives you the ability to talk with any sort of richness and depth.
I've said this before, but I think at some point, I'm going to have to step away from writing for awhile--maybe a year, two, three, I don't know, and just read\travel\hike\live do whatever. Before I started blogging, I spent long periods talking to no one really. Just living and being quiet. I was young and hungry and desperately wanted a megaphone. And yet I learned so much in my time without one. Youth wasted on the young. At some point, I'll have to go back and try to be that kid again.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I remember reading Foucault's Pendulum. I was bored out of my mind for hundreds of pages, and then the ending was so incredibly awesome that it retroactively made the whole thing into a fantastic read.
I know you've missed my witty commentary. :) But I've been here listening, laughing, crying and learning - my "Books to Read" list is incredible. And I'm all for sabbaticals, but let's not get crazy here. You don't create the demand and then get shoddy on the supply. What kinda dealer are you??
Your last paragraph -- your job is interesting most days, that's certain, and you have earned our interest. And you're not loading bricks or throwing down mortar.
But your job really sucks. Thinking about what you will say all the time, very long hours, and just saying something intelligent takes effort. Plus the continuous self-assessment. Andrew discussed this a couple weeks ago. Don't see when you get time to read. And thankful that you do it. But wouldn't want to do what you do. Consuming.
Oh you have to read. You have to. You'd have nothing to say, if you didn't.
It's pretty simple--I don't have a social life. I have my beautiful family, a smattering of friends, and then my work (reading, writing, thinking etc.) Not much else. Warcraft instead of TV.
That does kind of suck, but the things that used to make up my social life aren't particularly conducive to being a writer, or to being a functioning member of my family.
Is it sadistic to admit that I have an entire summer off to read, and to think about what I will say in the Fall?
For many years, I worked a "real" job. And my wife still does (working harder and longer and more productively, helping neglected children, than do I). So I do appreciate this life of mine. But I found, when Andrew was gone a few weeks back, that I was still annoyed that he wasn't there for me. We are a really needy bunch. Requiring constant cultivation, apparently.
I was wondering about that. I know plenty of writers with nice social lives. But if what you prefer as a social life isn't going to fit well with writing or family life, then that's a pretty big dilemma. I guess you either take the time off, or find a new social life that fits in.
That's the second time today you've announced that you know what humans' "deep seated desires" are (the first was "Bigotry is human"). I'd like to know how you are able to distinguish between common things, deep seated desires, fundamentally human things, socialized or learned things, genetic things, etc. Not to jump on you too much, but I think it's a cop out. Not that you use it to excuse bigotry, but other people do all the time.
And with regard to this post, I think we're in a hyper partisan time right now where people do this a lot, but it would be a major mistake to think that we always have and always will.
He didn't state he "knew" what humans' deep-seated desires were-- you read that into the statement, wrongly. And what he stated from his perspective is known in the psychology scholarship as "confirmation bias." It's about as deep-seated a psychological phenomenon as you could ask for, if you actually read that secondary lit. Not eternal or unchanging throughout history, but as a rough constant not controversial. More to the point, pointing out confirmation bias does not justify the refusal to work on it in one's own thinking. On the contrary, it suggests why we need to get cracking.
I don't know the psych lit. I definitely think that tendencies towards confirmation bias change across contexts -- and if it's based on the psych lit, then it probably hasn't been tested over different periods of time related to different social and historical periods, let alone different groups of people (say, non-college sophomores, to be stereotypical of psych). I'm saying we're in a particularly "confirmation bias" oriented time right now, and that we shouldn't mistake that for more than it is. If we're dropping lit, the salons that Habermas's rationality works comes out of strike me as a particularly not confirmation bias-y period, at least for those who were allowed to participate.
I do agree with your point about confirmation bias. This seems like a good time to work on it.
As a therapist I have been priveledged to share in the depths of many different lives and if we are lucky, curious, and work hard at it we can shift from having to be right, and needing others to echo/recognize this, to living right. Which isn't so much about going back to being a child but about leaving adolescence and stepping up for adulthood, so do what you have to do for you and yours, we will be with you whether you are here or not.
I think the biggest problem for a young writer is to read compulsively to become knowledgeable about what's out there, rather than for the love of it. There's a period, for some life long, when this is about finding new accents, new vistas--a kind of hi-carb mental body builder beverage, but in doing so what one often finds is a deadening effect.
That's why "being a kid again" is so important, though sadly, one day you wake up and you are not so young anymore, and the time for contemplation in that old and open way when the underside of the rock is interesting of itself as a phenomena of life less and less accessible, and often there is little more than to stop by the woods on a snowy evening with miles to go ahead of you. And even then, critics years later will tell others that to stop thus was to be a bit fascinated by death, when it was life the farmer's gaze so hungrily embraced.
Step away from blogging, but please not writing. You could easily stop reacting to everything that happens every day by putting down the blog and say write a novel? Am I the only one who can't wait for the Coates' novel? I guess we could be waiting for ever...but I simply don't see how you can have that kind of power with words and not take a shot at writing the great book...
You're not the only one but a son has to eat. MacArthur Foundation? Are you listening?
I'd second this notion. Is there a way you can write privately instead of publicly as a type of sabbatical? That way you can safely write down all the notions you would usually blog about but you don't have to make sure the notion is fit for public consumption, you don't have to turn it into a final product right away. Then after some amount of time you can turn back to all those partially formed notions with a broader scope in mind. This would allow you the deeper understanding and pondering that you're not satisfying with the *gimme*gimme*now!* false urgency of blogging.
I don't know what that would mean for this blog, but it seems odd to me that a writer would want to stop writing. Are you sure it's not that you want to write more for you and less for us? Good luck. Know that I'll be jealous if you get a paid sabbatical.
This has always been my life's dream -- not having to work and just being able to explore my inner-self, read, read, read, travel and live. But with the need to earn a living (working all the time to support myself), I am not hopeful that I will ever be able to fulfill this particular fantasy. (Retirement is a long way off. Sigh.)
One of the many things I enjoy about your blog, is your self-reflection and your willingness to discuss (and expose) your self-idenitified flaws and/or limitations, your humanness. You lay it all out there for all to see and pick over; it is awfully courageous.
My kidneys failed in 2007. I can't work, and have a lot of time to get caught up on a lot of reading, internal work, and introspection.
It's overrated. I'll trade any of y'all for a job and a salary.
Sorry to hear that, Wally. I believe you. I'm coming off of 6 months of unemployment, and while the free time was great, it wasn't anywhere as great as, say, an unexpected day off when I'm working, multiplied by 6 months. The contrast, the balance, of going out/staying in, working/dreaming talking/listening is what makes each side if the pair satisfying.
Interesting, I'll have to look up the essay, "plodding" my way through the book in question at the moment.
It's... interesting. Not really my thing, but I liked Name of the Rose so I figured I'd give it a shot. Definitely different than what I'm used to reading. About halfway through and I'm not even sure there is a plot per se.
I know where you're going. For me, it was Name of the Rose, then How to Travel with A Salmon (very accessible, pithy, often funny shorts) and then Pendulum. Made me wonder if Eco purposefully wrote in different styles as sort of a meta-demonstration of his semiotics... different ways to mean. It's worth it. You'll see.
Yeah I mean, it's interesting to me in an abstract sense, it's just completely not what I was expecting. I was expecting a more standard novel instead of an exercise in deconstruction - or whatever it is. I suspect I lack many of the tools to "properly" enjoy it, but I'm still finding it worth reading.
A normal book takes me about 2 days though, this one is going on 2 or 3 weeks ;p. Mostly just because it's not gripping in any sense like a standard "story" is for me.
I know the feeling. The first 4/5ths is definitely not one of those books where you are sad to see the end. OR that you lose sleep over, reading into the night.
TNC, you need to walk the earth like Caine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_(TV_series) now that Carradine is gone.
Reminded me of this article about him my wife sent me this morning:
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/06/05/david-carradines-legacy-of-shame/
I never really got into the show, and I'm a white guy, but I can totally see where the writer is coming from. I mean, it's a bit gross what he did with that show.
Seriously though - autoerotic asphyxiation? At his age? I did not have seen that coming.
"the late philosopher Richard Rorty wrote a powerful review essay of Umberto Eco's great book Foucault's Pendulum titled "The Pragmatist's Progess" I have been trying to locate this online but cannot. does anyone have a copy they could send me? or aim me in the right direction?
But before you actually go there, know that this is a preview of the book. I think you might have to go the old route of interlibrary loan to actually read the Rorty article.
http://books.google.com/books?id=wbhROmD3guQC&dq=%22richard+rorty%22+%22umberto+eco%22&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=LNU_VpEFX_&sig=KgiShynK36iV6RDWJchNlv-2Bs4&hl=en&ei=mHoqSqKzFKPKtgex1sXxBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPR7,M1
Starts at page 89.
Just a heads up ... the above links to some of the pages of the essay but others are left out. The whole essay is in the book "Interpretation and Overinterpretation."
I like to collect books that interest me even when I'm not sure why. Sometimes they sit for years unread and then in a moment, sometime later, I find their use. It always puts a smile on my face when it happens ... today I could pull down my copy of the above. Little things like that make me happy.
Exactly. People ask me if I have read all the books in my too-big library. Answer: No. But I will some day.
"I haven't read the review, but I think that's such a good point about reading nonfiction. The airwaves\blogs\books\magazines are filled with fucking idiots who just cherry-pick to make cliche point after cliche point."
It isn't just nonfiction. C.S. Lewis has an excellent little book An Experiment in Criticism which talks about different ways of reading and judging fiction. I'd strongly recommend you read it, it is short and will change the way you look at how you read.
Traveling without moving, reading, is important. And I could not agree more - if you are only interested in exploring what you already know... boring. Reading that the world is round and not flat can change everything around you. Circling the world yourself can change everything about you....
Forgot to add the soundtrack to my post.