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18 April 2011

The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything. A really thoughtful essay about what it means to well-read, or well-versed in any kind of arts/pop-culture medium.
It's sad, but it's also ... great, really.

I totally agree! How freeing!

Great piece, thanks for linking.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 18 April | 09:42
This makes me feel much better about the fact that I spent all weekend rereading things I've already read many times.
posted by JanetLand 18 April | 09:56
In terms of culling a friend told me Saturday night that she does not listen to Top 40 and does not allow her kid to listen to it either. In her effort to cut out "crap music" she is missing out on some good stuff. The Beatles were once in the "Top 40", too.

I do make an effort to choose thoughtfully when it comes to books and movies, perhaps too much. I'm a sucker for ratings and critical reviews. If the general consensus is that it sucks, I will not waste my time.
posted by LoriFLA 18 April | 09:57
Lori, I think choosing carefully is a good thing. I'm really picky myself, especially with time-consuming things like books and movies. It's the arbitrary boundaries like "no Top 40" or "no genre fiction" or "I hate TV" where people cause themselves to miss out on a lot of really cool things.
posted by BoringPostcards 18 April | 10:15
Well, that there's magnitudes more to read than one can read is not new.
What's strange is that realising this as a teenager did not diminish my drive to be well read, to know all the grand titles of world literature.
It's only much later that I got the feeling that the need to be well read is part and parcel of middle class status warfare and that I didn't find that fulfilling.
Just look at the expression. It's "being well read", not "reading great stuff".
I've come to the conclusion that for me art is a form of entertainment. And as such I don't labour anymore at reading high art. If the newest Foster Wallace irritates me I gladly dump the tome in favour of going running and enjoying myself.

To be honest I still miss "being well read" as something that you can say about yourself. As a part of my ostensible identity.
posted by jouke 18 April | 10:34
Just look at the expression. It's "being well read", not "reading great stuff".

I love that. Especially since I've been finding all sorts of great novels in the Remainders section of the bookstore lately. I guess both critics and consumers dislike them, but they're still great stuff.
posted by occhiblu 18 April | 10:51
It's the arbitrary boundaries like "no Top 40" or "no genre fiction" or "I hate TV" where people cause themselves to miss out on a lot of really cool things.

And quite often, that's where snobbery rears its head, too.

I can't tell you how many people have loftily disdained my movie-night choices with "Horror movies? They're all trash." That's different from "I don't watch horror movies." Don't watch 'em? Okie-dokie, that's your choice, and we all have to make personal or even arbitrary choices about which pieces of art we consume.

But if you disdain "horror movies" as a whole, you're deriding a huge swath of film history, including a whole mess of classic films (Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Freaks) and you're probably artificially re-categorizing modern masterpieces in order to get in in under your snobbery radar; movies from Repulsion and Diabolique to Silence of the Lambs, which bear all the hallmarks of horror right down to the graphic displays of death and dismemberment, are often categorized as "thrillers" for marketing purposes, because "horror" bears such a stigma... and that practice perpetuates it.

There are whole categories of art that I don't seek out, just as there are categories that I do. Rap? Opera? C&W? I don't know much about any of them. I don't think that's a limitation in the body of work, but a limitation in me.
posted by Elsa 18 April | 11:02
This makes me feel much better about the fact that I spent all weekend rereading things I've already read many times.

Oh, JanetLand, I do this all the time! I actually accumulated a stack of much-loved old books to read this week, knowing I'd be all doped up and groggy. These books aren't just old; the edges of the pages are all blunted to a felt-like softness from years of handling. It's like spending time with old friends: you may have heard their stories a hundred times, but it never loses its charm.
posted by Elsa 18 April | 11:04
Here is a small story: One night many years ago, just after I finished graduate school, I was watching the quiz show Jeopardy with my parents, and the category was Literature, and, in front of the two people who just finished paying for my brand-new master's degree in Literature, I proceeded to miss every single question. Bless their hearts, they didn't say anything, but I bet they thought a thing or two.
posted by JanetLand 18 April | 11:46
Well, this goes for all life experiences, not just books, music, movies and such.

It's not only a choice of (say) what books to read, but how much of your life to spend reading as opposed to all the other things you could spend it on.

On the topic of choosing what to read / watch / listen to, I'm pretty often surprised by how often I've ruled things out based on uninformed preconceptions only to later discover how much I like them.

Recent example... Battlestar Galactica. I never watched the re-imagined series because of a vague memory of the crappy 70s series. (Which for all I really know might not even have been crappy, but it seemed that way to my very young self at the time.)

I only discovered what the fuss about BSG was by accident because it happened to be in the schedule next to something like Treme.
posted by philipy 18 April | 12:00
There are people who choose not to watch television – and plenty of people don't, and good for them – who find it easier to declare that they don't watch television because there is no good television (which is culling) than to say they choose to do other things, but acknowledge that they're missing out on Mad Men (which is surrender).

This nicely expresses my attitude toward TV. I don't have it any more. That's not to say that there is no good TV, because there is, but that I don't want to have it as an option at home, because I'd rather do other things that, if TV were an option, I might not ask myself to do. Over the years, I've found that though it's not hard to find good stuff on TV, it's all too easy to find good stuff and then just sink into the experience of having the content fed to me that I stop making distinctions about what I'm really enjoying and what I'm not. There are some things I miss about TV, but on the whole, not a lot. We now go out to watch a baseball game once or twice a week, and stream stuff online, and when I'm at the gym I'll enjoy some HGTV. That's about it, though.

I realized long ago I'll never be able to read everything I want or even keep up with new publications. As we continue producing more information, it just gets clearer and cleare that no one can master the known world of learning and arts the way someone could in 1750. It's an existential problem, though, not one of media and books alone, as others are pointing out. Life is limited. Time is a limited resource. We all have to make choices about what we do with our time. In this "culling vs. surrender" construction, there's not much difference in the end. Once you surrender, you still make choices about the time you do have. And choice-making is easier when you set aside categories of information that you're not going to explore, even if you would really enjoy some of it. I think that's part of the undertstanding of mortality that comes with maturity - accepting that there are some things you would definitely enjoy that you're simply not going to find time to do. And the best possible reason for that is that you're doing other things you enjoy.
posted by Miko 18 April | 12:37
I hate TV because I love shows like Home Improvement and Nascar races.
posted by Ardiril 18 April | 13:23
Yet another reason to become a vampire.
posted by deborah 18 April | 13:43
In this "culling vs. surrender" construction, there's not much difference in the end.

I suppose not. I might be considered guilty of culling because I don't pursue reading fiction. I do a little here and there, mainly beloved classics from my childhood, but I don't get into much else (other than theater, I suppose, most of which I see live on stage). But what can I do? It's one of those I refuse to force. I got enough going on and enough things I'd really like to get into that I just don't.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 18 April | 15:17
This is a very interesting article to me right now because I've been thinking seriously about being a producer vs. being a consumer. I think ultimately when I'm 80 years old (assuming I'm that lucky) I'll feel happier about having produced a few good things in my life rather than having watched another 100 movies or read another 200 books. It's all too easy for me to keep consuming the endless supply of cool things that other people are producing, especially since I think that they'll help me a grow as a person -- and perhaps that is true to some extent. But I want to carve out more time for myself to grow and think independently -- not always trying to catch my reflection in some beautiful thing made by someone else. I'm not sure if that makes any sense.
posted by peacheater 18 April | 16:16
I'm finding this out through Facebook. I get so many social opportunities presented to me each week, but I can only do maybe one or two now and again. The rest I have to just pass on.

But... the things I do get a chance to do, I thoroughly enjoy. I have to tell myself that the life I have that gets in the way of all these other activities really is the life I want (and yes, it is). When you already have what you want, how can you want more?
posted by Doohickie 18 April | 19:00
I feel this every day. Living in even a small(ish) city means that I miss scores of cool cultural events every week. We went to the ballet on Saturday but how many concerts, plays, art shows, talks, etc did I miss?

I just created a hundred movies to watch list in Google Docs based on Jim Emerson's 102 Films to see ... list since so many of them are on Netflix. I'm up to 54 and having fun with it but I'll still never see all the films that I want to see.

I get at most two hours a weekday when I'm not working, cleaning, doing errands or sleeping and you can only fit so much in. Do I read the book I just bought or watch a movie or one of the TV shows on the DVR or play Minecraft or just screw around with Mefi/Mecha/etc?
posted by octothorpe 19 April | 08:05
Longevity is overrated.
posted by Thorzdad 19 April | 13:19
Jews who are keeping Passover: what will your last meal be today at lunch? || Bunny! OMG!

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