On reading scholarship
Juneteenth as a federal holiday, year two. I don’t have a job, but the holiday does bring me some respite. Karin got a day off and helped to mind the children.
Amazon delivered a package. No rest for those workers.
Our air conditioner has been repaired, and just in time: after a cool weekend, the temperature is rising again.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
After some months of staying put, philosophically speaking (Daniel’s birth threw off my routine), I am back upon that horse, reading articles and books, some of them rather old, about the ethics of nuclear warfare and deterrence; about the problem of dirty hands; about political realism, as opposed to political moralism; about the distinction between “private” and “public” morality; and about the epistemology of testimony. The topics are related, though not seamlessly. Their common elucidator is C.A.J. Coady. The longer I live, and the more I read, the more I prefer to read the same author on many topics than many authors on the same topic. Monologs rather than dialogs. Or, more precisely, I prefer dialogs to be recounted within monologs, in a clear, familiar, and singular voice. It’s one thing to give every point of view its due; it’s a different and considerably more tiresome thing to listen to every person who expresses a new point of view. It used to be, I would read topical anthologies because I thought it was good to listen to different people talking about the same topic. Now I read anthologies because, by and large, different ones feature the same authors. The better authors. I never took sociology in college, but I acquired a nice volume of first-year sociology readings. I used to think they were chosen for their topical importance. Now that I’ve read around for twenty years, and I know more names, I realize those topics were chosen because those authors had written about them. Which is well and good.
Another thing, it’s nicer to read people who don’t give a citation for every little point. Better for an author to do as Quine does and just call the other guys “McX” and “Wyman” and not refer explicitly to their writings. I realize you only can write like this once you’ve Arrived. Until then, you have to cite everybody under the sun, and you have to drone on in your acknowledgments about the many hours during your fellowship year when you were encouraged by Senior Figure So-and-So and criticized, over pints or during long walks, by Up-and-Comer Such-and-Such. Which is a bit groveling and, frankly, not much fun to read.
I’ve noticed that novelists write longer and longer acknowledgments now. These are annoying because they’re like, “I want to thank my agent and my tireless editor and all my friends and my dad and my mom … and my dog, ha, ha.” As if the general reader would care about that. When even the novelists have to display all their social and professional connections, we know there isn’t likely to be a place for a loner like me in the industry of the mind.
Amazon delivered a package. No rest for those workers.
Our air conditioner has been repaired, and just in time: after a cool weekend, the temperature is rising again.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
After some months of staying put, philosophically speaking (Daniel’s birth threw off my routine), I am back upon that horse, reading articles and books, some of them rather old, about the ethics of nuclear warfare and deterrence; about the problem of dirty hands; about political realism, as opposed to political moralism; about the distinction between “private” and “public” morality; and about the epistemology of testimony. The topics are related, though not seamlessly. Their common elucidator is C.A.J. Coady. The longer I live, and the more I read, the more I prefer to read the same author on many topics than many authors on the same topic. Monologs rather than dialogs. Or, more precisely, I prefer dialogs to be recounted within monologs, in a clear, familiar, and singular voice. It’s one thing to give every point of view its due; it’s a different and considerably more tiresome thing to listen to every person who expresses a new point of view. It used to be, I would read topical anthologies because I thought it was good to listen to different people talking about the same topic. Now I read anthologies because, by and large, different ones feature the same authors. The better authors. I never took sociology in college, but I acquired a nice volume of first-year sociology readings. I used to think they were chosen for their topical importance. Now that I’ve read around for twenty years, and I know more names, I realize those topics were chosen because those authors had written about them. Which is well and good.
Another thing, it’s nicer to read people who don’t give a citation for every little point. Better for an author to do as Quine does and just call the other guys “McX” and “Wyman” and not refer explicitly to their writings. I realize you only can write like this once you’ve Arrived. Until then, you have to cite everybody under the sun, and you have to drone on in your acknowledgments about the many hours during your fellowship year when you were encouraged by Senior Figure So-and-So and criticized, over pints or during long walks, by Up-and-Comer Such-and-Such. Which is a bit groveling and, frankly, not much fun to read.
I’ve noticed that novelists write longer and longer acknowledgments now. These are annoying because they’re like, “I want to thank my agent and my tireless editor and all my friends and my dad and my mom … and my dog, ha, ha.” As if the general reader would care about that. When even the novelists have to display all their social and professional connections, we know there isn’t likely to be a place for a loner like me in the industry of the mind.