This may sound like a bit of a rant, but something I see too much on this sub is, ironically enough, anti-intellectualism. Now it doesn’t bother me that some people only read for fun or don’t enjoy classics. What does bother me is the total dismissal by some of very impressive works of literature because they’re “too dense” or “not fun” or “have really long sentences.”
For example, I think it’s patently ridiculous when I see people on here not only saying that guys like Herman Melville and James Joyce are bad writers but that anyone who says they enjoy them is lying to sound impressive. There are most definitely “classics” that I don’t enjoy (catcher in the rye) and great authors that are not to my taste (Nathanial Hawthorne). But there’s no way I would go on Reddit and make a claim like “Hawthorne is a terrible author.”
No, he’s a great author who’s not to my taste. This is a point that in all kinds of criticism I don’t think we collectively grasp any more. The fact that you don’t like something doesn’t make it terrible, and if other people say they enjoy it, it doesn’t mean they’re lying. Your opinion is not a fact.
Bottom line is there are a lot of reasons to read things and a lot of things that make a piece of writing great. For example, if you read for escapism, you probably will not enjoy a dense book that you have to put in work to finish. If you read to sharpen your mind and gain new insights, you may be drawn to those same dense books. Moreover, some books are great because of their plot (tale of two cities), some are great for their simplicity and sub-surface symbolism (old man and the sea), some are great for world building (lord of the rings), some are great for their stylistic innovation (Ulysses), some are great for their lyricism (great Gatsby), and some are just great for their overall engagingness and readability (The Shining). There are a lot of different ways writing can be great.
To say Ulysses is trash because it doesn’t have a great plot or the old man and the sea is trash because it doesn’t have a complex style is missing the point. Now, it’s reasonable to say you don’t enjoy one of those books because you primarily read for plot or because you prefer a less simplistic style, but to say they’re bad books because they fail on your personal metrics of taste is just wrong.
I think the world would be a better place if we were all a bit less snobbish, but I also think it would be better if we didn’t so readily disparage greatness and dismiss legitimate ambition as pretension.
by bigben1234567890
35 Comments
The funniest review of “Ulysses” on Goodreads:
“This just goes to show that white men will be endlessly praised even when putting in minimal effort.”
Like, of all the myriad ways one could criticize “Ulysses”, ‘low-effort’ seems pretty far down the fuckin’ list.
What you described is more “haterism” than “anti-intellectualism”
There are books and genres that appeal to all of us. For example, I think Moby Dick is one of the best American novels of all time, but I also disagree with Catcher in the Rye being on the same list. Just my preference. However, I wouldn’t put down someone for having different opinions.
This post did make me realize I need to get back to pushing through Ulysses.
People just don’t want to admit they don’t know something and they don’t want to be accused of being stupid or lazy (which I understand) so they try to find an excuse for not having had the patience or time to study a difficult book. Approaching authors like Joyce or Melville or Homer requires a certain degree of humility, you have to read, re-read many times before you are really comfortable with all the subtleties, and probably you need to read some critical studies or articles to delve deeper in the structure of the story. This takes time and is not fun for everyone, I totally understand. So instead of saying: “Well, I don’t have fun doing this, I’d rather read Stephen King”, which is totally understandable (and I advice you to read King because it is so much fun), they diminish the value of the great classics to avoid feeling ashamed.
I think the process goes:
1) all reading is good.
2) quality of art is subjective
Therefor: all reading is functionally equal.
It’s a pretty awful way of looking at things imo but I see it a lot in this sub. Lots of people will use subjectivity as a way of hand waving away hard discussions.
I think ‘anti-intellectualism’ is a bit of a misnomer here but I think I understand what you’re getting at. A pet peeve of mine is people describing ‘intellectual’ books as ‘pretentious’ just because they didn’t like it or thought it was too dense. They are also _convinced_ that everyone who says they like the book is lying.
People often confuse not liking something with that thing being bad quality when it comes to art. You see this a lot with music fans as well.
I agree it would be nice if people didn’t put down books because they require some level of intellectual engagement, or because, horror of horrors, their teacher MADE them read the book in high school.
That said, a default subreddit is gonna reflect popular taste. Statistically speaking, it makes sense for books that the majority of people can easily understand are the most popular. You have people who read more complex books sometimes dipping into a “fun” read where they can “just turn their brain off” and then you have people who generally don’t read except for the most accessible books. That might be due to reading in a secondary language, literacy skills issues, intellectual exhaustion from other parts of their life, or just being literally 13 years old. So, that nets the most discussion around currently popular, “low reading level” books.
It’s really no different for the main subreddits for music, television, movies, photography, visual art, videogames, and so on. Most posts are going to be about things most people have read/seen and not be heavy on critique or theoretically grounded opinions on what makes good or bad art. Also, having tried something more intellectually challenging or “weird” or whatever is also a common experience that people like to talk about. Some of those posts are going to be praising the more complex work, but others will be seeking community and validation for not “getting it.”
Basically, if you’re not getting what you want from this sub/main subs about arts, you should try checking out more niche subs. r/literature and r/TrueLit both feature discussion of classics and current literary fiction. There are also niche subs for different genres you might like to check out.
There’s no scientific method to prove ‘greatness’ or ‘trash’ when it comes to art. However, I can respect someone’s viewpoint if they actually explain why they personally like or dislike something.
People love arguing for the sake of arguing. And gatekeeping. Particularly on this site.
I think that buried in his initial statement of “anti-intellectualism” is a statement saying “It’s OK to not like stuff”. You don’t have make up reason on why a classic author is actually bad because you didn’t enjoy the book. Too often, I see people spouting nonsense to justify not liking a book, as if a simple “not my jam” is insufficient and there has to be something deeply flawed and wrong to not like a book.
This is hardly unique to books too. Just recently I had a similar conversation with a coworker that bought a videogame based on the reviews score and went “WTF is this nerd shit”. For some reason, it never occurred to him that personal taste might prevent him from enjoying it regardless of reviews score.
Something I struggle with on Reddit is having to force myself to remember that the majority of people on here are likely less than 25 years old, with a lot of them still in high school.
Reddit is, at its core, a great bastion of anti-intellectualism.
You can’t really criticize books based on the author’s technical prowess, so naturally books that fall outside the bell curve are going to be disliked by most people.
Twilight didn’t sell two hundred million copies because it was beautifully written.
But if you take away people’s right to judge books on their personal preference then there’s not much left to talk about.
May I introduce you to r/BadReads?
Personally I don’t really care if people think classics suck, I have some fairly strong critiques of some well respected books myself. All I ever ask is people give a thorough attempt at the matter and not simply say “it’s boring” or “it’s too long winded.”
With that said, I find *in this sub* in particular, any “controversial” thing I comment is more likely to be downvoted without response, which given that we’re all readers (theoretically) you would assume people would be more apt to participate in actual discussion.
To quote Peep Show:
Why does everything have to be *fun* to be worthwhile?
“Crick and Watson have discovered the double helix.”
“Did they do it on a skateboard?”
“No.”
“Well, fuck off, then, I’m not interested.”
I feel that we judge books from 1700’s and 1800’s by the style of today. As time goes by, writing styles have changed. When we read a classic, it is going feel off because we judge it on the standards of today. Settings feel foreign and unfamiliar. The pages are filled with the unfamiliar and at times confusing. I believe we should read the classic but remember that the classics are not Star Wars or Harry Potter. Books of today is not the books of the past.
I’ve heard people say the same things about Jazz and Classical music. Some people just don’t like the idea that someone likes something they don’t understand. The irony is, there are some people who like these genres who become super elitist about it, and anything within the genre that is too popular is looked down on. 1812 overature is a good example of this. Overall it’s a dope ass piece, but because it is one of the few classical pieces that pretty much everyone has at least heard (even if only in a cartoon) it gets snubbed. Fuck that, I’ll say it again. 1812 is a dope ass piece of music.
I’m seeing a lot of responses in here claiming that OP is calling anyone who doesn’t like ~|Sherman~~ Herman Melville or other classic western canon books anti-intellectual, which is absolutely not what they said. I’ll just pick out the relevant parts:
Anti-intellectualism
> Now **it doesn’t bother me that some people only read for fun or don’t enjoy classics**. What does bother me is **the total dismissal by some of very impressive works of literature because they’re “too dense” or “not fun” or “have really long sentences.” **
> I think it’s patently ridiculous when I see people on here not only saying that guys like Herman Melville and James Joyce are bad writers **but that anyone who says they enjoy them is lying to sound impressive**.
> The fact that you don’t like something doesn’t make it terrible, and **if other people say they enjoy it, it doesn’t mean they’re lying. Your opinion is not a fact.**
> Now, it’s reasonable to say you don’t enjoy one of those books because you primarily read for plot or because you prefer a less simplistic style, but **to say they’re bad books because they fail on your personal metrics of taste is just wrong.**
> I think the world would be a better place if we were all a bit less snobbish, but **I also think it would be better if we didn’t so readily disparage greatness and dismiss legitimate ambition as pretension.**
As you can see, OP is not just saying that works like Moby Dick are beyond reproach or criticism and that anyone who dislikes it is dumb or anti-intellectual. What they’re saying, obviously, is that there’s a pattern of people claiming that these works are bad **because the works don’t appeal to their personal tastes**, and that these people are holding up their personal tastes as the metric for quality over any rational measure of quality and claiming that all of the people who disagree with them are just lying to sound smart. This is literally what anti-intellectualism is: when you dismiss intellectualism as a scam concocted by elites so they can claim to be better than others and choose to raise your personal intuition over anything anyone else says no matter how good their arguments are or how much evidence they have.
>that anyone who says they enjoy them is lying to sound impressive.
if you ever feel a weird little warm glow out of nowhere some day, know that it’s probably coming from me. I’m getting really sick of being pissed on by comments like this, just because someone else can’t seem to deal with the fact that other people do enjoy writing that they struggle with.
Here and everywhere. Films. Games. Shows. People will fervently defend their escapism, and refuse to hear that not all fiction is made equal.
> No, he’s a great author who’s not to my taste.
This, strikes closest to the heart of what you are describing, in my opinion. We have weird ideas about opinions anymore. Everything you like must be objectively good. Everything you don’t like must be objectively bad.
If you don’t like Moby-Dick, but it’s normally widely regarded as good, you have your work cut out for you. You are obligated to either prove that it’s “actually” bad, or you have to really try hard to like it so you can join the other team and look down on people.
Another thing that is mostly positive though is that we in 2023 are more comfortable rejecting pressure to enjoy what we are “supposed” to enjoy. We have killed the “guilty pleasure”. Now it’s just pleasure. Adults are buying Legos and watching superhero movies and reading YA lit instead of Moby-Dick. Okay, that’s mostly good, or at least from a good place, but it has downsides. One is that sometimes people get carried away and that rejection of pressure becomes the point. Like, it’s more important for them to talk about how they’re not reading Moby-Dick than it is for them to talk about what they’re enjoying most about their 7th reread of the Witcher books.
Anti-intellectualism is on the rise across the board, not just regarding literature. I don’t care if people want to be snobby, or on the other hand turn their nose up at books or other things they view as too intellectual. What actually worries me is the political ramifications of that way of thinking.
It’s a sub where one of the quickest paths to karma is to tell people “life’s too short, I abandon books if they don’t grab me in fifty pages or less.” Clearly the prevailing attitude is one of “how does this fit my expectations,” rather than meeting the art on its own terms.
And hey, that’s fine. Folks can read or not read whatever they like for whatever reason they like, but the mindset that anything worthwhile is coming with immediate gratification or catered especially to their tastes is a particularly silly, especially in a medium that has countless remarkable slow burns, and so many works that can offer unique, unexpected perspectives.
One of my most gratifying reading experiences was reading Moby-Dick just after college. As I read, I looked up a bunch of different words I didn’t know and Googled things I didn’t understand. It was not an easy book to read, nor was it a “fun” book to read, but it was gratifying and enriching, and I think it legitimately made me smarter.
A-*f*cking*-MEN!
The bar is also getting super low with what people say is pretentious.
I’ve seen someone being called the prose of George R Martin to flowery and pretentious. THE FUCK ARE YOU READING?
I think it’s good to remember that, at least on reddit, some of that sentiment is coming from literal children who are practicing having an opinion.
I got downvoted to oblivion on here once when I insisted the Odyssey is not “just like a Marvel film”.
I’ve taught several sections of college literature. If I want to intimidate the students, I’ll assign a small dose of poetry. After we’ve read a work, we unpack it line-by-line to understand what the writer is saying. If I say “ancient Chinese poetry,” I can physically feel the groans. Once we break it down, it’s surprising how many students will lose their fear and enjoy the poems. One student told me he read some of the poems to his wife to stir things up. We had to recite poetry when I was in the 5th grade, and all of us hated it. Having to recite verbatim the “Concord Hymn” can put anyone off poetry.
As an English major, I’ve made my way through classics with little pain. My father introduced me to Jane Austen’s works when I was 12, and that was when I discovered classic British literature. I’m fine with people who love Stephen King’s books; they’re just not for me. I read mostly mysteries that are sometimes on the intellectual scale and sometimes not so much. I believe that as long as people are reading, we are going in the right direction.
the trick is to recognize your emotional enjoyment of a book as being separate from the work itself. it’s hard to do
Anti intellectualism screams philistine Harry Potter fans lol
Welcome to the current state of, well, EVERYTHING.
People make the exact same argument with 2001 and Stanley Kubrick, that people are just pretending to be smart, but not them the actual smart one who sees through the ruse!! Ironically a very pretentious statement.
I had this argument once with someone about Kendrick Lamar too where they were saying you should be able to get something the first time and the same thing every time, tried to explain that as someone from the art world he’s basically describing shallow mindless consumerism. He wouldn’t hear it. Some people order Chicken Tenders no matter what restaurant they’re at.
I don’t want to live in the world of exclusively artsy shit either, but it’s interesting to me how defensive people get in their disinterest with challenging media. And yes the word “pretentious” is one of the more obvious victims of the overall lack of literacy in the modern USA, along with “socialism/Marxism/communism”. They both tend to get lazily used a lot when people run out of argument too which is even worse.
This sub often reads like a parody
A few days ago someone on this sub dismissed the Brontes and Jane Austen by saying they didn’t want to read about a bunch of rich people problems. Not exactly what you’re saying but kind of.
People definitely need to learn that personal taste and opinions are valid, but that can and should be separated from whether a work is objectively good. And there are so many ways something can be good. Does it do whether it set out to do, and was the goal a worthy effort? I’ve learned to appreciate different styles of writing and storytelling though I do have my own preference and very distinct taste for what is enjoyable to me.