Interesting that you draw explicit a connection that I've always felt implicit regarding loneliness and being drawn to books; because in a way reading has never been more well social than before but there's a certain performativness to it all. Different ways of loving books, different ways of appreciating literature.
Thank you for the comment. I feel like I'm only building on a tradition itself built on the implicit connection you felt and I think surely on some level we who love books all feel. I think James Baldwin has a quote along the lines of, you think you are alone in the entire history of the universe and then you read.
I only recently stumbled across booktok or whatever (within the last year). It baffles and confuses me, because it has a performativeness that's very different to the performativeness I'm used to around books, the aloof disaffected niche intellectual poseur, which is the more known quantity to me. But on balance I am prepared to maintain my thesis that the booktok people are also lonely.
I've long been scared about booktok though it's only the latest manifestation of a long-running trend towards performative reading. Reading for clout has always been a thing as well as a lot of who go for the aesthetics of books but the internet like everything has kinda become more obsessive. It's easy to shout, but there's no to hear you. You can sense movements and things going on around you far more intently but lack the ability to do anything about tit.
I think booktok and the intellectual poseur ultimately don't have that much to do with reading per-say bt stem from the same need to belong to something. To claim an identity a space to operate.
Interesting! I see the booktok as about belonging, and the poseur as slightly different, more about defensively crafting a safe false identity to hide behind. but i think you are right that both of these are about trying to create a space to operate in when just being yourself in the world doesn't feel like a good enough option.
"The mark of being unserious is never having had to consider this, not even in a secondary way, on behalf of another. And there are many unserious people in our midst." - that one's a keeper!
I think people are hard on Camus in the same ways that they're hard on Deleuze, and Arendt. They're lots of people's introduction to readable modern philosophy (my high school teacher taught L'Etranger in 11th grade), and then you turn a certain age (it's different for everybody, but it always arrives), and then there's this desire to distance yourself from a former version of yourself which you now see as naive or amateurish by distancing yourself from your childhood heroes. A strange syllogism
I think you're right. I also discovered Camus in high school, we got taught The Plague, I just for some reason continue to strongly rate him despite whatever complex loathing / feelings I have had on and off over the years about myself at that age. Possibly one reason is that I continued to read him into my 20s and 30s, especially his diaries and The Rebel, and continued to find more of myself in there as well. (For whatever that chimera is worth.)
"There comes a time when we must ask ourselves if it is worth it — this is the point of Camus in general, the point the Myth of Sisyphus makes. The answer is yes, yes in general, but getting to yes here is not easy." And -- once you have chosen yes, the question does not recede, you have to affirm every day, multiple times a day. That repetition, for me, is just as difficult - if not more - than the original response to the question ...
every yes is not easier !!! right ?? so fucking annoying. you think you did so good getting to yes the first time. but it's like eating ground glass every time.
every few months some wheezing print outlet (G-d bless them (unless it's the new york times)) publishes a cri de coeur about "whether people even like books anymore because of TIKTOK" and i just .. don't exactly get it? Feels abundantly clear that (1) there are always going to be people who love, love books, who love books and think that books are their friends and (2) that’s never going to be very many people
I love this comment. I agree, and I partially wrote this post because I'm sick of that stupid shit. I also love how hard you went here -- people "who think that books are their friends" -- like shit, oh my god, called out.
(also, excellent choice of username, the OG nonbinary icon... or certainly an OG nonbinary icon.)
I've never made the connection so starkly between readers and loneliness, but that rings absolutely true. At least as a way into becoming an avid reader. Maybe reading great books regularly also breeds more loneliness because most people we meet face-to-face can't live up to the company we choose to keep in our reading hours. Although that also makes it feel that more special when someone does. And maybe books can teach us to love in spite of that (though maybe a bookish kind of love).
As someone who felt it deeply and with great pain in my early youth, this need to be seen, to be understood completely (and to call it loneliness) receded over time, even absent fulfillment, i.e., the abyss still stares at me. I just do not seem to gaze back at it so often. I do not think I feel less, or understand less, or know myself better. It just became a tolerable companion, the empty seat next to mine. A place to rest my handbag.
I really appreciate you leaving a comment, thank you. I'm honoured and glad that the post sparked a reaction. At the same time: There's nothing in this post about needing to be understood completely. If that was/is your definition of loneliness then I can certainly understand where you're coming from, but that's not really what I'm writing about. The words “seen” and “understood” do not appear in this post.
Interesting that you draw explicit a connection that I've always felt implicit regarding loneliness and being drawn to books; because in a way reading has never been more well social than before but there's a certain performativness to it all. Different ways of loving books, different ways of appreciating literature.
Thank you for the comment. I feel like I'm only building on a tradition itself built on the implicit connection you felt and I think surely on some level we who love books all feel. I think James Baldwin has a quote along the lines of, you think you are alone in the entire history of the universe and then you read.
I only recently stumbled across booktok or whatever (within the last year). It baffles and confuses me, because it has a performativeness that's very different to the performativeness I'm used to around books, the aloof disaffected niche intellectual poseur, which is the more known quantity to me. But on balance I am prepared to maintain my thesis that the booktok people are also lonely.
I've long been scared about booktok though it's only the latest manifestation of a long-running trend towards performative reading. Reading for clout has always been a thing as well as a lot of who go for the aesthetics of books but the internet like everything has kinda become more obsessive. It's easy to shout, but there's no to hear you. You can sense movements and things going on around you far more intently but lack the ability to do anything about tit.
I think booktok and the intellectual poseur ultimately don't have that much to do with reading per-say bt stem from the same need to belong to something. To claim an identity a space to operate.
Interesting! I see the booktok as about belonging, and the poseur as slightly different, more about defensively crafting a safe false identity to hide behind. but i think you are right that both of these are about trying to create a space to operate in when just being yourself in the world doesn't feel like a good enough option.
"The mark of being unserious is never having had to consider this, not even in a secondary way, on behalf of another. And there are many unserious people in our midst." - that one's a keeper!
Thank you CJ :)
I think people are hard on Camus in the same ways that they're hard on Deleuze, and Arendt. They're lots of people's introduction to readable modern philosophy (my high school teacher taught L'Etranger in 11th grade), and then you turn a certain age (it's different for everybody, but it always arrives), and then there's this desire to distance yourself from a former version of yourself which you now see as naive or amateurish by distancing yourself from your childhood heroes. A strange syllogism
I think you're right. I also discovered Camus in high school, we got taught The Plague, I just for some reason continue to strongly rate him despite whatever complex loathing / feelings I have had on and off over the years about myself at that age. Possibly one reason is that I continued to read him into my 20s and 30s, especially his diaries and The Rebel, and continued to find more of myself in there as well. (For whatever that chimera is worth.)
"There comes a time when we must ask ourselves if it is worth it — this is the point of Camus in general, the point the Myth of Sisyphus makes. The answer is yes, yes in general, but getting to yes here is not easy." And -- once you have chosen yes, the question does not recede, you have to affirm every day, multiple times a day. That repetition, for me, is just as difficult - if not more - than the original response to the question ...
every yes is not easier !!! right ?? so fucking annoying. you think you did so good getting to yes the first time. but it's like eating ground glass every time.
every few months some wheezing print outlet (G-d bless them (unless it's the new york times)) publishes a cri de coeur about "whether people even like books anymore because of TIKTOK" and i just .. don't exactly get it? Feels abundantly clear that (1) there are always going to be people who love, love books, who love books and think that books are their friends and (2) that’s never going to be very many people
I love this comment. I agree, and I partially wrote this post because I'm sick of that stupid shit. I also love how hard you went here -- people "who think that books are their friends" -- like shit, oh my god, called out.
(also, excellent choice of username, the OG nonbinary icon... or certainly an OG nonbinary icon.)
I've never made the connection so starkly between readers and loneliness, but that rings absolutely true. At least as a way into becoming an avid reader. Maybe reading great books regularly also breeds more loneliness because most people we meet face-to-face can't live up to the company we choose to keep in our reading hours. Although that also makes it feel that more special when someone does. And maybe books can teach us to love in spite of that (though maybe a bookish kind of love).
Also, RIP astrolabes :(
As someone who felt it deeply and with great pain in my early youth, this need to be seen, to be understood completely (and to call it loneliness) receded over time, even absent fulfillment, i.e., the abyss still stares at me. I just do not seem to gaze back at it so often. I do not think I feel less, or understand less, or know myself better. It just became a tolerable companion, the empty seat next to mine. A place to rest my handbag.
I really appreciate you leaving a comment, thank you. I'm honoured and glad that the post sparked a reaction. At the same time: There's nothing in this post about needing to be understood completely. If that was/is your definition of loneliness then I can certainly understand where you're coming from, but that's not really what I'm writing about. The words “seen” and “understood” do not appear in this post.