The Ongoing Conversation
Dear Reader,
We might call this “The Never-Ending Conversation,” but I thought that title would lead to no one reading this essay. In a sense, both that and the actual title work, perhaps even better together.
There’s a joke about philosophy, that it never arrives at any conclusions or makes any progress. Some philosophers respond to this joke—and it isn’t always made as a friendly joke—by noting that whenever philosophy does “make progress,” people spin it off into an entirely separate discipline.
And so, in that narrative, philosophy is a victim of its own success.
Perhaps.
Here’s the thing: I don’t much care about whether philosophy makes progress or reaches conclusions. (Okay, that’s not entirely true, and I think philosophy does both things, but even if philosophy did neither it would still possess value.)
I write the above for a particular reason, and it isn’t just about philosophy, nor is it because “philosophy has a particular set of tools that are valuable in life.” Blah blah blah.
I write the above because when we start reading, we enter a conversation. It’s a conversation that started before we entered the room, and it’s a conversation that will continue after we leave. (Plato’s Symposium catches this aspect of the intellectual life, even if it’s the least of the things one might glean from reading that incredible work and practically a sensus plenior interpretation of the text.)
The reading life, especially that which engages with good reading, means you hop into a conversation that is completely above your head. And just about the time you get comfortable in that conversation—never fully comfortable as there are always new faces of varying age with whom to converse—you have to depart.
Part of the reading life is the goal of joining that conversation and comporting oneself reasonably well within it. As in any conversation, there are the fakers, the social climbers. There are the close talkers; there are the wall flowers. There are those who cut off conversation—the ones you really have to work around if you want to talk with them—and there are those who readily invite you in.
To be clear, that idea of a reading party is metaphorical, not literal, though reading parties would certainly be an interesting addition to one’s reading endeavors. Perhaps I’m the only one—I’m pretty sure I’m not—but I’ve even felt self-conscious about reading certain books in the privacy of my own home. Like, who am I to attempt reading some of these luminaries?
It’s all well and good to read David Foster Wallace on the game of tennis—I played tennis and grew up watching the pros on television whenever I could. But to consider DFW when he’s writing something like Infinite Jest or one of his earlier essays? What does it mean to start grappling with a world-class writer?
The reading life is a strange place. For example, I came across Alan Jacobs only recently, simply because I had to evaluate How to Think for my own research. And I do mean evaluate.
He: a PhD and public intellectual.
Me: a fairly reluctant researcher and not a PhD.
And yet, in the area of Jacobs’ book, I’ve read more in that genre, particularly at that level, than most people would find desirable. So my reading would be an evaluation of it, not a mere passing glance or excitement to learn at the feet of some intellectual luminary. I picked up the book because of a research obligation, not for personal edification or a kiss-the-ring obsequiousness.
I mention this story because, in conversation with another intellectual whom I’ll write about at a later date, I noted how I enjoyed Jacobs’ book for not being annoying in the way such books are typically annoying. (Mostly: they are pedantic and filled with fluff and errors and inconsistencies)
In that conversation, the intellectual excitedly rejoined, “I’ve learned so much from Jacobs over the years, too! He was really formative in my early thinking and writing.” And, while I certainly appreciated Jacobs’ How To Think and I’ve happily recommended it to many others, two things were true. First, he didn’t and still hasn’t formed my thinking in any deep sense.
Second, there wasn’t a single book or essay cited in How to Think that I found myself reading afterwards, which means his book didn’t suggest to me anything I hadn’t already read or found a parallel version of elsewhere. (This is literally true. The bibliography traverses quite a bit of the startup and pop psychology realm that would be a novelty to many academic readers, but couldn’t be to me as someone who’s been involved in the startup ecosystem for over a decade. And as for the more intellectual works, many of those I’d already read and even taught.)
This second point is rather important: I leave most books with a list of five more books or articles to read. I leave some books with hundreds more to read. That Jacobs’ book is good is true. That Jacobs’ book didn’t possess anything I hadn’t stumbled across elsewhere is also true.
Now, I respect Alan Jacobs more than most intellectuals today. I’ve referenced his stuff before in this newsletter; I’ve got another of his pieces queued up for our consideration in the next month or two. He’s a much better writer and thinker than I am. He’s probably a better reader, too.
All of that can exist and yet I can be someone who read his book to evaluate it, not sit at his feet for tutelage. (This doesn’t mean I read his book in a singular mode. Evaluation doesn’t obviate learning! As I wrote in critique of Neil Postman recently, reading isn’t a monotonic experience.)
So in my conversation with this intellectual who’d been deeply influenced by Jacobs, I had to clarify that I wasn’t specifically benefiting from my read of How to Think. My interlocutor was a bit shocked, as if I’d suddenly boasted of great intellectual prowess, but I didn’t read Jacobs a decade ago: I read him after my own decade’s worth of detailed research in the very area he was writing. If Jacobs were writing on interpreting T.S. Eliot or W.H. Auden—writers on whom he has great expertise and with whom I have no dexterity—I’d have learned much. But on the subject matter he’d chosen to write on? I wasn’t reading him to learn. I was reading him to see what was there related to my research. (Specifically one term, and then how it was surrounded.)
The ongoing conversation isn’t about trivia—regardless of the impoverished, pseudo-intellectual assumptions of the Core Knowledge crew—and it also isn’t about leveling up to the point where you’re evaluating public intellectuals. I shared the above story simply to highlight how a decade’s investment in reading can shift the dexterity with which someone can converse about certain topics. I hadn’t planned on such a shift; it happened as a natural byproduct of joining the ongoing conversation.
The ongoing conversation is about trying out ideas, trying out essays and stories and books of varying length. It can include re-reading, and it can include new works—both new to you and recently published. And, of course, it can include absurdly old works.
(All right, this next bit is genuinely one that is much debated, and I keep debating it with myself. Thus, it’s a parenthetical addition, one you can consider as you like. The ongoing conversation largely isn’t about the currently trendy topics. It’s not that the ongoing conversation doesn’t include them. It’s that the ongoing conversation isn’t directed by them. (Please note that I used the word “trendy.” An admitted difficulty of the ongoing conversation is recognizing which things are trendy and thus of passing importance and which things are timely and yet also of enduring importance.) Of course, I just wrote that the ongoing conversation isn’t directed by current trends, and yet some of my favorite intellectual essays are ones that incredibly current in many ways. Perhaps the best way to look at it is that the ongoing conversation isn’t identical to a timely read. It can, perhaps, include timely reads, but there’s always a reference to something outside of the immediate temporal concern. There’s a certain depth, an allowance for the weight of ideas from the nearer and more distant past to converse with us.)
As one final note about the ongoing conversation, it doesn’t typically have a set form. While there might be some reads that are more valuable than others for that journey, there isn’t a completely definitive list. Oh, some guides will espouse such a list. But I neither trust them nor seek to join them. I’ll make suggestions, sure enough, but the ongoing conversation isn’t so narrowly prescribed.
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh
P.S. Some recent subscribers may have found themselves in an analogous situation to this piece's discussion of joining an already-in-progress conversation, since they’ve found themselves mid-conversation with the essays on Lost in Thought. While each of those pieces can probably stand on its own two legs, they are obviously connected. One more of those essays, and then we’ll be down to the once-a-week newsletter schedule, a publishing rate much nearer to my own comfort level. (My real comfort level is, as always, never.)