Notes to Self
Homework in my quest to read and write better.
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Whenever I make a reading plan, it derails. Last week, I lined up three books, then veered down a rabbit trail into Benjamin Franklin, Alan Jacobs, and a heap of flash fiction on Substack. My list remains in serendipitous jeopardy. Franklin came from the Apple TV show on his nine-year mission in France ~1776. It's good, but it's now made me want to read Stacy Schiff's book - the script's source, since the characters' interiority is seriously lacking. The standard quick wrap-up that has come to define so much of streaming now - is frustrating, a bow quickly plopped on top and end scene. I read a blog post by Alan Jacobs on the estate rights of famous writers and the challenges of publishing and preserving truth in their posthumous biographies. Intrigued, I picked up his book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction - a fantastic, timely read. If I were to recommend a primer on reading and attention, this would be it. But ironically, prescribing it this way might strip away the very pleasure and curiosity it encourages. Review forthcoming. On the pleasure of reading, I’ve been turning to Substack. It's habit now. For years, my inbox was filled with news, nonfiction and thematic deep dives, but in 2025, that shifted. Lately, I’ve been loving flash fiction and the fewer the words, the greater the wonder. Wrong Turn Lit has been a standout. Aside with discovering oceans of fiction online, I've reacquainted myself with the art of the essay. This particular essay on essays from Essay Architecture stood out, the thesis is positively invigorating: “…the mainstreaming of the essay is important to fight for, considering it was a latent but unrealized potential of the Enlightenment. It’s a vehicle for personal sovereignty, and I believe the vibrancy of a society’s essay culture is a proxy for how much its citizens value critical thinking.” It's a compelling essay, inspiring me to work on the craft. Who wouldn't want to try to “excavate the mind” and tempt to “discover truth through writing”? Since Americans tend to think in terms of self-improvement, the Franklinian Protestantism baked into us, I read to get better. I read to be a stronger writer and I believe fully that the writer who doesn’t read much will fail to produce any work of consequence. And if you have no interest in writing but simply do not want to experience mental atrophy, you should read. to read is to rebel, In this age of Big Tech and artificial encroachment, I view reading a book as a small act of rebellion. I can coexist fine with technological advancement but I won’t be subsumed by it. I won’t submit, day and night, to the supercomputer in my pocket...We must, in our own ways, rebel, and not be amused to death. when was rebellion ever easy? What reading does do is make demands of the individual. It is active, not passive, and the act of reading wills an imagination into being. The imagination is the greatest muscle of all, one that must never be allowed to atrophy away. I feel fortunate to have stumbled upon the Dividual letter, in which I read a great deal. I appreciate how it enforced many of the sentiments above, read + write: There is no secret formula, no code behind language, that excludes lesser minds while secret handshaking those who choose to buy in...as with looking at a painting, is that you are exposing your mind to being nourished without needing to define it another way. Too often we try to read with purpose, as if everything we do must have a takeaway; instead, letting the words wash over you, taking what you take from them, and carrying forward tends for me to be a much more effective way of being ‘in’ the book, letting the soul of the book into my consciousness. making me reconsider my deep-seated intimidation of poetry, poem can be really satisfying to swallow in one bite, and then have echoing in your head while you do other stuff. There isn’t a single writer of prose (or poetry!) who wouldn’t be massively benefitted by washing their mind in poetry, which tends to lead to more unique sentences as you convert that energy in your own writing. Don’t think you like poetry? Think of it as weight-lifting; you might not like it now, but it will do your mind and spirit good whether you think you ‘understand’ it or not. as is the case with many things, Determining what you like is practicing taste: time spent reading something that isn’t exactly for you isn’t time wasted; it’s time honing your taste and view, and can lead to unexpected places when what seemed out of sorts at first ends up becoming compelling. Nowadays, you would think health was knowing every barometric number was within the normal range, which is not what I call silence but a cacophony. In awe of how Berger conducted his days - "I organize my days!" was his simple reply when Sally asked how he managed to publish several books a year, handwrite (and mail) personal letters, maintain close relationships, cook and paint daily etc. The structure of his day reflected his priorities. "Berger on death (paraphrasing), 'The dead are always with us. Those of us who are lucky to be alive at this point are like a kind of core, surrounded by this wheel of the dead presences of our ancestors...'" Reading Alan Jacobs, I found solace in the lives of readers before me - those who bore all the weight of this letter’s emotions, yet pressed on. None of our problems are new!: historian Ann Blair explains, the printing press ushered in an age of information overload. In the seventeenth century one French scholar cried out, “We have reason to fear that the multitude of books which grows every day in a prodigious fashion will make the following centuries fall into a state as barbarous as that of the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.” Such will be our fate “unless we try to prevent this danger by separating those books which we must throw out or leave in oblivion from those which one should save and within the latter between what is useful and what is not.” the Middle Ages too!? “the high Middle Ages, a period which by our standards and even the standards of the sixteenth century had few books. For instance, in the thirteenth century we hear from Vincent of Beauvais: “Since the multitude of books, the shortness of time and the slipperiness of memory do not allow all things which are written to be equally retained in the mind, I decided to reduce in one volume in a compendium and in summary order some flowers selected according to my talents from all the authors I was able to read”—that is, a kind of Culture’s Greatest Hits. But after the invention of the printing press, books had so multiplied that a project like Vincent’s would have been self-evidently absurd.” I began reading Protocol Reader, but I'll need to revisit it when I have more time, focus, and space. |
Notes to Self
Homework in my quest to read and write better.