New Learning: Round 5

(Earlier rounds here.)

Is reading a book (by which I mean literary fiction) mandatory for leading a wise life?

Last year in a post on the Facebook page, I mentioned how there has never been a better time for books and people who like to read than the present time. Yet people keep complaining that nobody reads. Even though the evidence points to the contrary. A recent survey showed that millennials are out reading older Americans, and are buying more books rather than borrowing them. (Much to the publishers delight, you’d suppose.) Of course, if you walked around with your eyes open you'd not need a survey to see that. 

Fact is that since reading became something that humans do, there have always been some people who “liked to read a lot” and many who didn’t. But is reading books necessary to lead a purposeful life? In my life I have come across many people who don’t read books (some don’t know how to read) and yet are living meaningful lives, even happy lives if that is what you prefer. After all, reading– especially reading for pleasure– is a privilege. (And obviously related to social class, but that is better left for some other forum.)

I am happy to note that Tim Parks recently shared similar sentiments in ‘Reading Upwards’.  

“What no one wants to accept—and no doubt there is an element of class prejudice at work here too—is that there are many ways to live a full, responsible, and even wise life that do not pass through reading literary fiction. And that consequently those of us who do pursue this habit, who feel that it enriches and illuminates us, are not in possession of an essential tool for self-realization or the key to protecting civilization from decadence and collapse. We are just a bunch of folks who for reasons of history and social conditioning have been blessed with a wonderful pursuit.”

He also makes another point that I have made many times before that people who enjoy reading Chetan Bhagat/ Dan Brown aren’t going to move onto Manto/Shakespeare. That is a ruse of publishers who only seek a growing bottom line, yet control what people get to read.

That brings me to the second point: Now that the traditional publishing industry is, shall we still whisper it, moving towards an (inevitable?) end, what does it mean for the “world of books”?

I know people who bemoan the end of books as they know it, mostly those who claim to “read a lot”– those who have books lying around on the floor everywhere and so on. Some get to write about it– mostly white people, especially white men of a certain age who have benefited (not just monetarily) the most from the existing structure of the publishing industry. (I don't need to post hyperlinks to prove how whitest white and male dominated the world of publishing and published books really is, do I?). And then I see that people I know are in the process of writing or have written books– especially women of color– many, even a few years back, would have deemed the idea of getting published impossible. In part this is due to the rise of self-publishing and online literary magazines. (In traditional publishing/media the bias is still towards stories told from the point of view of a white person/or what they’d want to read.) Never in the history of human society have so many people written or are in the process of writing books. They may not be writing War and Peace but that may be simply because that’s not what they want to write– at least not in that form.

Which brings me to the most perplexing issue: what exactly is a book? Is it a place where stories live? Growing up in India, I learnt fairly early in life that stories weren’t imprisoned in books– they were free flowing long rhymes, and layered episodes which a person could narrate from memory for days, without a single piece of inked paper in sight. After all, stories have existed since before the invention of paper and the advent of the printing press. And these were truly democratic stories; every narrator would freely add to the existing framework and create something new, while staying close to the original text and its other versions. Consider the epic Ramayana and its several versions: each narrator would borrow from, critique, build on earlier versions and thus carry forward the story. A reason why the story has stayed alive for so long– a version exists to appeal to the sensibilities of every listener down the years.

As A.K. Ramanujan pointed out sometimes the real value of the story lies not in the fact that it resides in a book, but that someone is “really listening to the story” (see page 15 of his essay "Three Hundred Ramayanas").

And let’s not even get started on the gibberish regarding e-readers. All opposition simply confusing the medium for the message: books and e-readers are the medium, not the message. I am fortunate to have some members in my family who have never known a world without the internet. It helps keep my arrogance in check (“things as they were in my time are the way things should always be” that sort of things). For everyone else, here are some of the sanest words ever written on how we perceive any new technology:

“I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.”

– Douglas Adams, How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet

Why the cutrain is blue

I’m sure you must have come across ‘the curtain is blue’ meme at some point in time, where the teacher says the curtain is blue because the writer is depressed and the punch line is the writer saying ‘the curtain is blue, because it is f@cking blue’. It is supposed to be a joke on over-analysis (this in an age when no one has the patience to analyze what they say or tweet). To me the meme, besides showing that both the writer and the teacher aren’t good at their jobs (let the reader find the meaning) also highlights the crux of our ‘comprehension problem’. When even newspapers resort to headlines that provoke a reaction rather than encourage thought, it’s safe to conclude that comprehension and analytical thought are no longer our species strong suit.

Gabriel García Márquez explains (in The Art of Fiction No. 69, The Paris Review) why the butterflies are yellow (or the curtain blue):

INTERVIEWER

You describe seemingly fantastic events in such minute detail that it gives them their own reality. Is this something you have picked up from journalism?

GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

That’s a journalistic trick which you can also apply to literature. For example, if you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants flying in the sky, people will probably believe you. One Hundred Years of Solitude is full of that sort of thing. That’s exactly the technique my grandmother used. I remember particularly the story about the character who is surrounded by yellow butterflies. When I was very small there was an electrician who came to the house. I became very curious because he carried a belt with which he used to suspend himself from the electrical posts. My grandmother used to say that every time this man came around, he would leave the house full of butterflies. But when I was writing this, I discovered that if I didn’t say the butterflies were yellow, people would not believe it.

That is the hallmark of a great writer. Also the reason why good story-telling is so damn hard. (Complete interview here: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3196/the-art-of-fiction-no-69-gabriel-garcia-marquez)

As an aside, years ago while reading ‘Life of Pi’, I came to the part where the family plans to migrate, and the mother thinks of all that she'll miss about her life in Pondicherry. Like all good writers to make the part believable Yann Martel names names– for example, the television, she’ll miss watching her favourite shows on, is an Onida, a brand well-recognized by Indians of a certain age because of its standout (though not necessarily good) advertisements that featured a green Devil like figure with the tagline ‘neighbour’s envy, owners pride’. But the novel is set in the summer of 1977. Onida TV began production in 1982. A novel whose premise is believability, is using specific details to make the story believable, but because of such seemingly minor inconsistencies suddenly became hard to believe. Suffice to say I couldn’t complete the book. (Also  Doordarshan, the government run sole TV channel in India, didn’t begin national programming until 1982 (the year colour TV was introduced). In 1975 it broadcasted to only 7 Indian cities.)

“…the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

– George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946)

Orwell’s words hold true for all forms of communication in any language. Consider the election rhetoric in India. That's why one is grateful that there are people around who pay attention to not just what is said, but also the words used, the context and the tone. And insist that other people do so too.

New Learnings: Round 3

Or quick takes on the social media, each worthy of a separate, longer post that shall not be written.

Prologue: For those unfortunate enough to hear the words 'social media strategy' on a daily basis.
In an interview in The Guardian: Thom Yorke on Radiohead's experience of releasing In Rainbows online.
Having thought they were subverting the corporate music industry with In Rainbows, he now fears they were inadvertently playing into the hands of Apple and Google and the rest. "They have to keep commodifying things to keep the share price up, but in doing so they have made all content, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to make their billions. And this is what we want? I still think it will be undermined in some way. It doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The commodification of human relationships through social networks. Amazing!"
Click to watch OnionTalks on Using Social Media to Cover For Lack of Original Thought. For those gaga over QR codes, here is a Tumblr that says it all – Pictures of People Scanning QR Codes

1. When content is valued over and above the individuals creating the content, then aggregators of all hues and sizes (Google, The Huffington Post, Brainpicker etc.) get the cream while the content creators are left scrapping the bottom of the barrel. The aggregators also act as gatekeepers to what kind of information we can access and in what form.

2. Information by itself is meaningless. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. For example, sharing every mundane life activity or everything you read is nothing, but of self-serving interest, especially if it is shared only to be 'liked', which in itself is a (sad) attempt at seeking social validation. It is in no way meaningful even to the people you know. More so, if by sharing you in are in no way furthering any kind of discourse whatsoever. It is just spam and like spam it has a much neglected environmental impact.**

3. The social media makes it easier for people to team up with others who share similar interests and exclude anyone who disagrees with them. That leads to what is known as enclave extremism– hardening of extremists viewpoints, aided by a sense of being part of a group, a mob. Internet Trolls and astroturfing (often corporately funded, read about attacks on climate science and climate scientists)  successfully and often viciously drown the individual voice of reason. The social media is anything, but democratic. And also not a very polite place.

4. Social media, as Evgeny Morozov wrote in 'The Net Delusion' creates an illusion of freedom. Instead of aiding democracy it is helping secret police and censors of autocratic governments (and corporations). It makes dissent manageable. (And yes, the revolution will not be tweeted, as Malcolm Gladwell wrote in 2010, and his central premise is hard to counter. Something that urban Indians also found out in December 2012.)

5. Another off-shoot is that we are becoming dumber and less analytical. Often when searching for something people click on the first link that Google search puts up and it is Wikipedia. There is also a tendency to dismiss people who frequently ask the question why or add a dissenting note to any popular argument as cynics.

** The internet does consume less energy, for most part. However, it comes with certain caveats. The internet doesn't run on magic. Every important and nonsensical thing shared online is stored on servers that you can access anytime with a click. These servers run on electricity derived from non-renewable energy sources. So, while you maybe growing an organic garden or not using  plastic bags it all comes to not if you are an over-sharer. Consider the last 5 things you shared online. Really, was it necessary to cross post those photos on various platforms. Or those links to breaking news and badly art-directed quotes. Consider your mail inbox. You won't believe how much server space all those mails in your inbox take up.

New Learnings: Round 2

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Some bits of advice picked up from here and there in the past year or so.

1

If you are serious about being a writer DON’T blog.*

Though this seems to go against the grain of what goes around as conventional wisdom these days– no truer words have been spoken. Pause for a moment and consider how many writers (meaning people who write books– fiction and non-fiction) have a blog. And by blog I don’t mean a website that has excerpts of their novels, links to their interviews or lists their scheduled public appearances, where they may sometimes write a paragraph or more on things of interest or some other mundane matters. But has anyone heard of a writer writing a blog to showcase, well, writing? Yes, writers do write for blogs of literary journals and magazines. But they are often published and well established writers, they get paid (that's why they do it to begin with) and not related to the issue under consideration here.

But one realizes the real wisdom behind these words when one considers what blogging does to writing. By that I mean the craft that goes into constructing a sentence.

As we are all strangers here we can be honest and acknowledge the undeniable truth: Blogging makes one get into the habit of, for want of better word, “lazy writing”. It makes writing seem way too easy because one is bolstered by the all too empowering belief that this is my blog and I can write whatever I want to, howsoever I want to. It is not hard to see what this leads to. The subject is “me” and the audience (sorry to burst the bubble) is also “me”. And the quality of the writing meh.

Then once the blog starts generating a certain number of hits one gets addicted, just like the seduction of  “likes” on facebook status updates, the craving for hits leads to the inevitable– trying to replicate the success of the one post that became "popular'" or what is more fastidiously referred to as playing to the galleries. And we all know how that story ends.

Yes, there are blogs that have transitioned into books, mostly because they had ‘x’ number of hits per day. A majority of the resulting books are found in the bargain section (the one that is way back in some dark corner) at the local bookstore just months after their release. However, there are exceptions to every rule, but in this case very few and very hard to find.

* A distillation of all that I have read in the past year or so. Online and in books.

2

Take care of your little notebook.*

Because your daughter may grow up to become Diane Keaton, who on reading the 85 journals mom wrote will write a heart-felt and moving memoir. 

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That isn't reason enough?

Then I present *Charles Simic's essay in NY review of books: “If one has the urge to write down a complete thought, a handsome notebook gives it more class. Even a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil are more preferable for philosophizing…”

I only refer to what the reviews says of Diane Keaton’s memoir ‘Then Again’. I have only read a few pages while browsing away the afternoon at the neighbourhood bookstore, as the building was conducting its annual fire-safety drill. It fell into my hands because after 3 hours of picking up a book at random and reading a random page I was not focusing; I didn’t even know where I was, let alone what I was doing.

3

Not focusing can free the imagination.

But To Do lists, especially if they belong to Leonardo da Vinci, are worth more than their weight in gold.

It is useful," Leonardo wrote, to "constantly observe, note, and consider."*

He filled over 13,000 pages with his observations and drawings that range from grocery lists and household expenses to compositions of paintings to detailed anatomical drawing and engineering inventions. He seamlessly glided from one topic to another often within a single page

It seems he could not focus on a single thread of thought. By not giving his complete undivided attention to one thing he was able to pursue everything, so to speak. Or conversely, he could focus on one thing so completely and so exclusively to all the rest that he could carry more than one thought in his head. His knowledge was not limited by fields or boundaries. That made him a genius.

*Robert Krulwich, in this piece, asks us to join him in slipping into Leonardo’s mind for a moment. How will we do that? All credit to learning number 2: Leonardo’s well taken care of notebooks.

4

Read Darwin, Marx, Joyce, Freud, Einstein, Benjamin, McLuhan, and Barthes.*

Curiosity. Across disciplines. About many things. About any and everything. That my friends, is not just the code that opens the gates to the world inhabited by Leonardo da Vinci, or the world of creativity in general but also the code that opens the secret pathway to a life well lived.

* Charles H. Traub, The Education of a Photographer

5

The future is not uniformly distributed.*

Thanksgiving weekend brought up a host of images of deprivation from around the world with the tagline­, “Consider how blessed you are. Be grateful. Walk a mile in their shoes” or something to the effect. My first thought: People who can barely walk tall in their own shoes should not even consider trying to walk in other people's shoes. Especially, if they have no idea to whom the shoes in the photograph belong.

It also reminded me of Good Will Hunting (again). The scene in which Sean MacGuire (Robin Williams) says to Will (Matt Damon),

You're an orphan, right? Do you think I'd know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you?

Books too aren’t of much help beyond a point. No, you can’t understand anyone unless you begin with trying to make sense of yourself.

In any case, you can spend an entire life without having a clue about yourself or the world in general. It is not just plausible, but possible. And as far as I can tell what many believe the short cut to a life well lived.

But there are always those who want to know.

Kurt Vonnegut said: Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. So that gives us someplace to begin this journey of trying to discover ourselves.

But if you are able to make sense of what you are and who you want to be and you realize that it is something that no one else ever was or wants to be. Take heart. For the future is not uniformly distributed. There is space for multiple stories, each with their own specific plot lines and unique endings.

What an uplifting and liberating thought! The future is not uniformly distributed. Everything is possible. All at the same time.

* From an interview with Tom Waits in The Guardian. Oh! Yes, I do consider him a sort of modern day prophet.

New Learnings round one can be found here.

New Learnings

When misanthropes become social media addicts, and no one notices the irony, you know it’s the worst of the times. And the best of the times. A time when every day brings new “learnings”.

Here’s what I learnt in the past one week.

1. Missing classes meant copying notes and catching up with what had been taught during our absence. Lessons weren’t repeated for our benefit. If we had doubts we could discuss them after class. Unsurprisingly, the world too operates on this principle. You missed what’s going on; it’s your prerogative to catch up.

Even to become a contrarian you need to understand conventions first.

However, if you are under 40 and don’t know what ‘tactical media’ is, despite being active on facebook and twitter. Despite doing PhDs from Oxford or Harvard. Despite working for a media outlet. In that case, it is simply time to re-evaluate your ‘education’.

2. People tweeting from their blackberries shouldn’t accuse those tweeting from their iPhones of being Luddites. Please get a dictionary. Or open a new tab and type ‘meaning Luddite’. Same rule applies for comments on facebook.

3. If someone claims to be an atheist and a meat eater chances are very high that they are most obsessed with religion and vegetarianism. That’s the curse of assuming ideas based on negation. The anti-ideology.

4. No matter what meat eaters, who may or may not be atheists, choose to believe - yes, being an atheist also requires following a system of beliefs, there’s a reason why most men and women capable of reasoning are calling for people to consume less or no meat at all.

If you don’t understand the problem with factory farming, over fishing, or how eating a solely meat based diet is resulting in wastage of resources and is unsustainable, don’t make facile arguments about plants being helpless (plants aren’t helpless they have been on this planet since before humans evolved).

That is unless you haven’t ever laid eyes upon any biology text. In that case read more.

5. Everybody has to live with his or her own peculiar contradictions. No matter how ridiculous.
Richard Dawkins on Vegetarianism: “What I am doing is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm, and it requires a level of social courage which I haven’t yet produced to break out of that. It’s a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery.“

6. Everything is connected. Often there is less than six degrees of separation. E.g. your desire for sushi for dinner once a week - extinction of blue fin tuna.

7. In the US, according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology, people think house sparrows grow up to become pigeons. This gives a clear idea of how much thought people put in before arriving at a conclusion. We see how deep the abyss is. We realize how much patience is needed to fill the gap with.

Postscript: Yesterday I realized bandhs are good for the country. Smashing public and private property, coercing people to stay at home through threat of violence, putting the country under an emergency like situation is the only way to get “people like us” to talk to the "poor" (okay just the taxi driver) and realize that inflation and price rise are badly affecting them. Shouldn’t we be calling for more bandhs?