Fantastic references. I find that the "intellectual half life" of great books is always worth the investment. Read a good article, you're lucky to reference it in your mind more than a week later. Read a great book, and you have the ideas forever available in your mind.
From the review of Submission by The Social Pathologist:
"... Islam achieves a victory in France and makes strides into Northern Europe as well. Houellebecq's realises that Islam does not need to conquer by force, all it needs to do is fill the vacuum as the ability to resist it has gone."
But remember the film, No Country for Old Men: it wasn't the scary psychopath antagonist who finally did the protagonist in, it was the professionals at the very end.
It's a curious comparison in this newsletter that we have Knausgaard talking about Western civilization quietly conquering Japanese culture; and then Houellebecq talking about Islam doing the same to Europe.
While I'm a voracious reader, I don't think I've read a novel since high school. I suppose I struggle to see the purpose of it -- reading such a long and padded telling of a single story, when I could have instead become educated on an entire topic about which I was previously ignorant.
If we're interested in a search for truth, then we should be pretty wary of any ideas that we are persuaded by as a result of reading novels, as opposed to real observations about the real world. Though perhaps it just helps you to articulate and distill certain half-formed ideas in your mind?
Now, I can see that fiction has a value in illustrating certain truths to children, who are going to respond much more strongly to stories than to dry descriptive prose.
Reading fiction of another time or place is also interesting as a historical study. In the search for truth, it also gives you a glimpse into what ideas and experiences are universal and timeless, and which are idiosyncratic to our own contemporary moment. But that's something very different from what a contemporary novel does for us.
Of course, being familiar with certain fiction can also be a marker of intellectual prestige. Or it can be needed simply to get along and understand frequent references and allusions in certain social circles. Though these days being familiar with certain TV shows is probably more important, even among highly educated elites, than being familiar with Shakespeare or something.
"Now, I can see that fiction has a value in illustrating certain truths to children, who are going to respond much more strongly to stories than to dry descriptive prose."
Do adults respond as well to dry descriptive prose as they do to great fiction? If so, it is hard to explain how Homer, Dante, et al. achieved such enduring places in our heritage.
It's true that everyone loves stories. What I mean to say is that stories are far more valuable for *teaching* truths (or lies) than *discovering* truths. We teach our children in this way. But as men, we need to be aware that the lessons these stories are trying to teach us might not be true.
I also think that Homer and Dante are studied primarily out of what I called "historical study", and secondarily out of educational inertia and intellectual prestige. This essay of Paul Graham's comes to mind, about how the study of literature has its roots in highly practical historical study of the Greco-Roman past but through inertia devolved into a meaningless scholarly prestige game.
And for all that, I think Dante and Homer are fascinating (I read the Divine Comedy for the first time about a year ago), but they're not exactly highly entertaining stories, nor do they ever read as well in translation as more recent classics of English-language literature or poetry. They're fascinating because history is fascinating and they're a deep dive into the very different perspectives of a very different time and place, which helps to make us aware of the narrowness of our own cultural perspective.
We read fiction because the best fiction gives insight into human nature, not for entertainment nor for historical value.
If you look at the Great Books of the Western World set, they established selection criteria that began with the great questions of life, which are part of the first volume, The Great Conversation. Then they insisted that a work must address some minimum number of those questions in order to be included. Then there was an evaluation of excellence in addressing those questions. the fact that different authors disagreed in their answers to the great questions was irrelevant; the choosers (e.g. Mortimer Adler) repeatedly had to address the point that the set was not a "canon of belief." If it were, then mutually contradictory beliefs would be part of the "canon" which is absurd.
You can see that there are many works of fiction in the set, along with history, science, and philosophy. That is because those works of fiction touch upon multiple great questions, in an excellent way.
Entertainment, intellectual prestige, study of history via literature, educational inertia, etc., have nothing to do with it.
Thanks, that's a thoughtful answer. Though I suppose I'm not really persuaded by it -- I think this is an argument that exists to defend the status quo, which itself was inherited from the High Middle Ages.
And I'm sympathetic to the idea that when it comes to the education of young people, that status quo (at least as it stood in the mid-20th century) is better than any realistic alternative. Better to read Homer and 19th-20th century classic novels than the fashionable novels of 2023.
But it's not persuasive to me to say that the Iliad offers some great insight into human nature that would be difficult to otherwise come upon, if we divorce it from its historical and sentimental value.
If all knowledge of Homer were somehow lost and someone secretly rediscovered the Iliad, translated it into English prose, renamed all the people and places, and presented it as his own original work of fantasy written in 2023, I'm not convinced that anyone would be impressed with it. In fact, I think most of the same people who are inclined to praise Homer would write this new work off dismissively as "genre fiction", "juvenile adventure stories", etc., written in a style that's devoid of charm, elegance, poetry (the curse of translation).
Now, here's one new thought I had: all of the novels Aaron is describing here have something *like* historical value, in that they offer interesting countercultural social commentary from outside the contemporary English-speaking world. Which is something to which we are otherwise seldom exposed. Also fiction can offer ways to offer unpopular, even taboo social criticism without being ostracized ("canceled"). Which probably explains much of Tom Wolfe's career. This again makes more sense to me than the idea that the actions of fictional characters, told in the form of a novel, are some uniquely powerful means of gaining wisdom about the great questions of life.
Fantastic references. I find that the "intellectual half life" of great books is always worth the investment. Read a good article, you're lucky to reference it in your mind more than a week later. Read a great book, and you have the ideas forever available in your mind.
From the review of Submission by The Social Pathologist:
"... Islam achieves a victory in France and makes strides into Northern Europe as well. Houellebecq's realises that Islam does not need to conquer by force, all it needs to do is fill the vacuum as the ability to resist it has gone."
But remember the film, No Country for Old Men: it wasn't the scary psychopath antagonist who finally did the protagonist in, it was the professionals at the very end.
It's a curious comparison in this newsletter that we have Knausgaard talking about Western civilization quietly conquering Japanese culture; and then Houellebecq talking about Islam doing the same to Europe.
The United States is also presently overpowering France.
Capitalism effects one kind of cultural expansionism, fecundity another.
Thanks Aaron, this is interesting.
While I'm a voracious reader, I don't think I've read a novel since high school. I suppose I struggle to see the purpose of it -- reading such a long and padded telling of a single story, when I could have instead become educated on an entire topic about which I was previously ignorant.
If we're interested in a search for truth, then we should be pretty wary of any ideas that we are persuaded by as a result of reading novels, as opposed to real observations about the real world. Though perhaps it just helps you to articulate and distill certain half-formed ideas in your mind?
Now, I can see that fiction has a value in illustrating certain truths to children, who are going to respond much more strongly to stories than to dry descriptive prose.
Reading fiction of another time or place is also interesting as a historical study. In the search for truth, it also gives you a glimpse into what ideas and experiences are universal and timeless, and which are idiosyncratic to our own contemporary moment. But that's something very different from what a contemporary novel does for us.
Of course, being familiar with certain fiction can also be a marker of intellectual prestige. Or it can be needed simply to get along and understand frequent references and allusions in certain social circles. Though these days being familiar with certain TV shows is probably more important, even among highly educated elites, than being familiar with Shakespeare or something.
"Now, I can see that fiction has a value in illustrating certain truths to children, who are going to respond much more strongly to stories than to dry descriptive prose."
Do adults respond as well to dry descriptive prose as they do to great fiction? If so, it is hard to explain how Homer, Dante, et al. achieved such enduring places in our heritage.
It's true that everyone loves stories. What I mean to say is that stories are far more valuable for *teaching* truths (or lies) than *discovering* truths. We teach our children in this way. But as men, we need to be aware that the lessons these stories are trying to teach us might not be true.
I also think that Homer and Dante are studied primarily out of what I called "historical study", and secondarily out of educational inertia and intellectual prestige. This essay of Paul Graham's comes to mind, about how the study of literature has its roots in highly practical historical study of the Greco-Roman past but through inertia devolved into a meaningless scholarly prestige game.
http://paulgraham.com/essay.html
And for all that, I think Dante and Homer are fascinating (I read the Divine Comedy for the first time about a year ago), but they're not exactly highly entertaining stories, nor do they ever read as well in translation as more recent classics of English-language literature or poetry. They're fascinating because history is fascinating and they're a deep dive into the very different perspectives of a very different time and place, which helps to make us aware of the narrowness of our own cultural perspective.
We read fiction because the best fiction gives insight into human nature, not for entertainment nor for historical value.
If you look at the Great Books of the Western World set, they established selection criteria that began with the great questions of life, which are part of the first volume, The Great Conversation. Then they insisted that a work must address some minimum number of those questions in order to be included. Then there was an evaluation of excellence in addressing those questions. the fact that different authors disagreed in their answers to the great questions was irrelevant; the choosers (e.g. Mortimer Adler) repeatedly had to address the point that the set was not a "canon of belief." If it were, then mutually contradictory beliefs would be part of the "canon" which is absurd.
You can see that there are many works of fiction in the set, along with history, science, and philosophy. That is because those works of fiction touch upon multiple great questions, in an excellent way.
Entertainment, intellectual prestige, study of history via literature, educational inertia, etc., have nothing to do with it.
Thanks, that's a thoughtful answer. Though I suppose I'm not really persuaded by it -- I think this is an argument that exists to defend the status quo, which itself was inherited from the High Middle Ages.
And I'm sympathetic to the idea that when it comes to the education of young people, that status quo (at least as it stood in the mid-20th century) is better than any realistic alternative. Better to read Homer and 19th-20th century classic novels than the fashionable novels of 2023.
But it's not persuasive to me to say that the Iliad offers some great insight into human nature that would be difficult to otherwise come upon, if we divorce it from its historical and sentimental value.
If all knowledge of Homer were somehow lost and someone secretly rediscovered the Iliad, translated it into English prose, renamed all the people and places, and presented it as his own original work of fantasy written in 2023, I'm not convinced that anyone would be impressed with it. In fact, I think most of the same people who are inclined to praise Homer would write this new work off dismissively as "genre fiction", "juvenile adventure stories", etc., written in a style that's devoid of charm, elegance, poetry (the curse of translation).
Now, here's one new thought I had: all of the novels Aaron is describing here have something *like* historical value, in that they offer interesting countercultural social commentary from outside the contemporary English-speaking world. Which is something to which we are otherwise seldom exposed. Also fiction can offer ways to offer unpopular, even taboo social criticism without being ostracized ("canceled"). Which probably explains much of Tom Wolfe's career. This again makes more sense to me than the idea that the actions of fictional characters, told in the form of a novel, are some uniquely powerful means of gaining wisdom about the great questions of life.