Reading

In anxious times, and we are living in one long, vibrating anxiety, culture becomes less adventurous and more consolatory. We look for texts that reduce friction rather than increase it, that name the problem cleanly, that confirm our moral orientation, that donât ask us to linger in contradiction too long. Books that can be summarised without residue.
This fear shows up most clearly in the cult of ârelatabilityâ. We are endlessly told that good writing is writing in which the reader sees themselves. And while recognition can be a point of entry, it has slowly replaced the more dangerous function of literature: dislocation.
To recognise yourself is easy. To be moved out of yourself is harder. Recognition flatters. Dislocation transforms.
Reading In Search of Lost Time, I realized that Proust described certain experiencesâbeing conscious, perceiving reality, observing the world, encountering other peopleâwith a kind of trembling, vital energy I had never experienced before.
Ottessa Moshfegh once said to Bookforum, âA novel is a literary work of art meant to expand consciousness.â (In that sense, Proust may be more transformative than a psychedelic tripâthough the most effective approach, perhaps, might be to combine the two.5)
The function of criticism, for him, wasnât to prescribe or proscribe; it was to âconnect.â To seduce and please, rather than Ă©pater la bourgeoisieâŠWhile criticism, for Baudelaire, was necessarily âpartial, passionate, political,â for Schjeldahl, it wasâabove allâpleasurable. Art, he claimed, was âabout 100 percentâ pleasure.You have to do what Schjeldahl did and communicate the experience of looking at paintings. To make people understand why you might invest your time in these experiencesâŠYou have to describe the blooming, buzzing experience of coming into awareness with art and why it might be desirable, more desirable and fulfilling than things that are easier.
Taste is more like love than education
What I needed, as a young reader, was for someone to tell me: These are the books that have the capacity to change youâto reprogram your phenomenological and philosophical approach to livingâto transform you.Taste is more like love than education
What I needed, as a young reader, was for someone to tell me: These are the books that have the capacity to change youâto reprogram your phenomenological and philosophical approach to livingâto transform you.
âAlgorithms pervert oneâs attention,â Broskoski notes, but âan atmosphere that promotes being performative does as well.â