The Art of Not Reading - According to Schopenhauer
A precondition for reading good books, is not reading bad ones.
To read or not to read, that is the question. As discussed previously, to live is to choose; we are all faced with infinite choices. One of those choices is what to read or, put another way, what not to read.
In his Essays and Aphorisms, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer explained,
The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones — life is short.
Similarly, the American essayist Henry David Thoreau advised, "Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all." For Schopenhauer, discerning which books to read is a critical decision. “Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself," observed Schopenhauer, "it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance."
Do you agree? Are there books that lead us astray? How does one know what books to pick up and which ones to put down?
In my interview with Karen Swallow Prior, the author of On Reading Well, she described reading well as an act of virtue, or excellence, a habit that cultivates more virtue in return. Reading richly layered prose or poetry requires us to slow down, reflect, and imagine the world through other eyes. Prior revealed that she did not realize until later in life how much being a reader shaped her thinking, perspective, and even virtues.
Therefore, the books to read are the ones that help us to see a new perspective. The ones that help us learn things that we don’t already know.
Another important question is when to read. To which Schopenhauer responded, you should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will, of course, happen frequently enough even to the best heads.
Seneca would likely agree with Schopenhauer. In a letter to Lucilius, Seneca warned against reading many authors and every type of book. This approach may reveal that there is something wayward and unstable in it. For Seneca, one must stay with a limited number of writers and be fed by them if we mean to derive anything that will dwell reliably within us.
Why does one need this reminder?
It seems an obstacle to reading wisely is a lack of patience. It takes patience to discern the right next book. And patience to allow one’s thoughts to dry up. In my conversation with Oliver Burkeman (author of Four Thousand Weeks), he stressed that we have the desire to put everything in fast-forward.
Burkeman writes,
There may be no more vivid demonstration of this ratcheting sense of discomfort, of wanting to hasten the speed of reality, than what’s happened to the experience of reading. Over the last decade or so, more and more people have begun to report an overpowering feeling, whenever they pick up a book, that gets labeled “restlessness” or “distraction”—but which is actually best understood as a form of impatience, a revulsion at the fact that the act of reading takes longer than they’d like.
How will remember to practice the art of not reading?
To help, it may be worth committing to memory the words of the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, "In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you."
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
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