I think I am probably equally invested in film and music as I am in literature, maybe because I have dabbled in all three, I don’t know. I think we could probably find examples to support both sides of such an argument, but that sounds like a series of posts unto itself, and would probably need someone far more intelligent than I.

If I wanted to be cynical, I’d say that this is because “no one reads anymore.”

Or that people are “more invested in movies and music.” And so those art forms are “more sophisticated,” even on a popular level. Or something like that.

Broad claims, I know, that can’t really be defended. But I do think that a lot of popular films and songs are “more complex” than a lot of popular fiction. Although maybe I’m just biased. I have more invested in fiction than I do in music or film, so I do think I tend to be more cynical about what people are reading (which isn’t me!).

Cheers, Adam

It’s interesting, too, how society’s tendencies shift. How what once would not be counterculture at all, can become so by the paradigm movement. Although it is interesting how fragmentation in literature is still scene as fairly avant garde, though not so much in terms of film, etc.

Booth’s book is pretty phenomenal. I encountered it maybe five years ago (I finally got around to it after being told to read it in grad school), and it slightly blew my mind. In particular, it altered the way I approach my own writing, which is something I will probably post about eventually (applying Booth to one’s own writing).

I’m a compulsive credits watcher, too. (They’re part of the movie!)

Have you seen Béla Tarr’s short film “Prologue”?

Brilliant use of credits. You will not avoid these people!

On a related note, perhaps: Our current society encourages speed, multitasking, fragmentation, skim-reading, channel-surfing, tab-browsing, parataxis. It also obscures production processes, and the role of labor in those processes.

I believe that it’s a counterculture decision to slow down, focus, reread, be linear, coherent. And to observe process.

At one time, fragmentation was a radical response to the dominant culture. But the dominant culture has changed, and fragmentation is now a Britney Spears video.

Cheers, Adam

Thanks, I’ll be looking up that essay. When I was in school I certainly told people that my compulsiveness regarding books had to do with a respect for the author, but I honestly think I was doing so because it sounded less crazy than telling people the truth. As I’ve gotten older and my pretensions have dropped, I am more willing to be honest about myself. I certainly have a lot of respect for the writer and I try to read their work in a way that exemplifies that. In a similar vein I try to watch the credits of movies, out of respect for all the work all those people put into it. But in that instance I am also able to walk away and not feel guilty, nor do I feel the pull that I feel regarding books, which is why I attribute the book stuff to my other compulsive behaviors.

I was unsure about writing this post at first, but I’m really glad I did, the discussion it has spawned has been fantastic.

If you haven’t read it, you might find interesting Wayne C. Booth’s essay “Who Is Responsible in Ethical Criticism, and for What?” in “The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction” (University of California Press, 1988).

I’m not a philosopher, and I’m certainly not an ethicist. (John can attest to the fact that I’m not good at arguing over responsibility! And I imagine he could talk more coherently about Booth than I can.)

But I might want to say (following Booth) that you’re taking a very ethical approach as a reader to others’ writing. (I’m not saying whether this is good or bad; it might not be either.) You’re choosing (as Booth might say) to agree to think the thoughts of the author or editor (by reading), and you respect the order in which those thoughts were put down. Not doing so makes you feel guilty because you feel (perhaps) as though you’re violating your ethical obligation as a reader.

Maybe. Perhaps.

Or it might be OCD. I don’t know.

One thing we might consider is whether a work like before. even with things like “The Complete Poems of Langston Hughes” deserves the same kind of respect that a work like “Not Without Laughter” does. Because with the latter, Hughes put the words in a particular order, and had it bound up as a novel. He intended—or at least hoped—that the reader would approach those words in that order.

But with “The Complete Poems of Langston Hughes,” we might argue that the ordering is more arbitrary. The poems are arranged in the order that Hughes wrote them—which might not be the order Hughes would have preferred us to read them in. It might be the order that the book’s editor would prefer us to read them in—but even here, that preferences is based on something that’s arguably arbitrary. And some scholars, or different editors, might argue that there are better orders for reading those poems, in order to understand things about Hughes and his poetry.

But then you’d be agreeing to think the thoughts of those scholars or editors…

Anyway, for what it’s worth. (And I, personally, love reading the last pages of books first.)

i was trying to think of some other bulky ones. when i bought Marvin Bell’s Nightworks: 1962-2000, he put a marker about 2/3 through the book and told me to start there. i laughed and told him it wasn’t going to happen like that.

But come to think of it, Hughes is really the master of the tiny, unassuming poem and they really gain force by accumulation– it definitely pays to read a lot of his work straight through.