When did reading get red pilled?
Give great books a chance.
During the brief time of my life when I tried to use Hinge, a certain kind of conservative man always responded to a prompt about my favorite books because of The Brothers Karamazov. At the time, I didn’t know that Dostoyevsky was an online calling card for Jordan Peterson fans and red pill Reddit dudes.
I understood Dostoyevsky as a compassionate Russian author who wrote about the least sympathetic parts of humanity and addressed existentialism with human and divine love. I couldn’t intuitively understand the political connection.
I wondered if the right wing emphasis on “doing hard things” valorized reading a 1000+ page Russian novel. They hadn’t bought into the narrative that reading any kind of genre fiction, be it westerns, romance, or fantasy, is the same as diving into a literary masterpiece. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy reading purely for pleasure as much as the next person, but I sit down for different reasons with an Emily Henry novel versus a James Joyce.
Literature attempts to do more than entertain, making it often more difficult to consume, but also more valuable.
It’s agonizing to me that because we have to accept and validate everyone’s reading preferences, we’re not allowed to state clearly that some books are more worthwhile than others.
People need to read great literature. A certain kind of person yearns to read it.
I can’t imagine who I would be if I hadn’t found a list of the 100 greatest novels ever written and started working my way through them at fifteen. If I hadn’t spent my four years of undergrad close reading the greatest books ever written, I would certainly be a shallower, less compassionate person.
I feel so lucky to have studied for four years under professors who, altough at an explicitly Christian conservative college, listened first to the authors we were reading, before thinking about ideologies or even class opinions. They taught me to approach the books I read with humility, to assume the author had something to say and to try to understand it before reacting.
This led us into the complex discussions of God, epistemology, and human purpose that I’d always hoped to have. They avoided the common pitfall of asking students to react to what they found offensive. Instead, they coached us through offensive texts, admitting yes, Dostoyevsky was anti-semitic or Faulkner wrote extensively about incest, but they were also more than that. They asked us to read deeply, even through discomfort.
Too often, I hear people state that some great book or another just isn’t their taste. It probably isn’t. But I wish I could ask them if they think their taste is more valuable than whatever the author could potentially offer them.
My now favorite book was not at all “my taste” the first time I read it, partially because Moby-Dick is like fine-dining and I had a palate for Chipotle. When I tried to understand Moby-Dick in high school, naturally, I came up short. I remember complaining widely, asking how this could be “The Great American Novel” if it was so boring.
A friend's mom reassured me that only stuffy old guys considered it that, most people thought Huckleberry Finn was the greatest.
I wish she hadn’t said that. What I needed to hear (and maybe could not have tolerated hearing) was “maybe you’re just not ready for it yet.”
It’s good to read things that baffle you and you don’t like. At this point, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve read something I didn’t get it at all, but eventually grew to love and admire.
I try to read things that are over my head and return to them a few years later or with a trusted advisor, hoping for more understanding. It took me three reads to grasp and love Moby-Dick, three attempts to even make it through The Brothers Karamazov, two reads, one with a professor, to enjoy The Sound and the Fury, and another two to fall in love with Beloved.
Probably my favorite book I read last year, Infinite Jest, was an absolute pain to read, but it touched me deeply, redefining my thoughts about addiction, mental illness, and the human condition.
There are so many good books on the other side of our discomfort and discouragement. It would be a shame to leave them all to the red pill dudes.
I hated Beloved when I read it! Might have to give it a second read after reading this post. Glad your DC dating days didn’t last long 😂
Unreal banger.