I will say that it's deeply ironic for this argument that books are the reading format of record taking the form of an essay in The Atlantic Monthly, although to say that would be an admission that I should probably subscribe to Ploughshares like I've been planning to for several years (they had just finished selling a bundle with several other journals I'm interested in when I last checked and haven't had another these last few years).

There's also remarkable vitriol for effective altruism buried in the later part of the essay, which I somewhat suspect is due to his identifying his low-paid career providing privileged young adults with lessons in recreation as his main form of altruism.

So you posted a link to an article about people who don't like to read books, and then took the time out of your day to take a shit all over the article's writer and his career choice to be a writer because you disagree with one of his points? Fascinating. *slow clap*

It must be too late cause I'm not making head, nor tail, of anything you wrote...

More noting an interesting implication in the premise and an oddly vitriolic aside about something basically everyone else would say is harmless at worst.

This is a complex topic, reading extends beyond books. And even then a lot of great people achieved and achieve immeasurable things without reading a whole lot.

Basically, he's writing how books are the only worthwhile form of the humanities in a respected journal of thought with a strong history of literary, philosophical, and analytical output.

The second part is that he seems oddly hostile toward the idea that altruism should be judged by what it does for the world, which may be because it very much discounts the benefit of a monastic lifestyle of self-sacrifice, which is how academics often see themselves.

And, of course, a lot of monsters were voracious readers. Stalin was particularly famous for his library and throughput.

That said, the three people in question weren't exactly proclaiming other avenues of high-quality thought, but we both know how differently people react to anything openly castigating the young women who take pride in consuming social media or YA instead of literary or analytical works.

[deleted]

I feel like you missed the point of the article. It's not about how a lot of people don't read books, it's about a potentially growing trend of anti-intellectualism that specifically reviles books and denigrates the act of reading them. Take this quote from Sam Bankman-Fried:

> I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.

It is not so much that these people are getting their information a different way, it's that they think the time committment to reading or writing a full-length book, rather than being a sign of some virtues such as patience and erudition, is a warning sign of self-indulgence or maybe even ignorance. (After all, if you read books you might get ideas from spending time with other people's perspectives. This would be bad; a betrayal of the self. Better to be totally subsumed in your own thoughts and point-of-view, that way you can truly know yourself and also that other people are a waste of your time.) The impetus, given the framing of these quotes, is obviously narcissism, but it appeals to a frighteningly large sector of the population that has low attention spans and an aversion to actually practicing empathy.

Well, I get your points, and every sentence could be made into an essay. And they have been discussed vastly, my argument is that there are valid points on both sides, this dialogue has been brought up many times, dialectics will take place and a middle ground will be either enforced or agreed. Intellectualism and pragmatism are valid, necessary and full of friction.

I think this is also another case where an article title misrepresents what the article is supposed to be about. There are plenty of people who don't read books for understandable reasons (like a learning disability or preference for audio so they can layer that over, say, long drives) but are still intellectually curious in other ways. That's a whole other discussion than people who literally argue against reading books simply because it's long-form media because they only find value in things that have been 'optimized'/shortened to their personal preferences (like the six-paragraph blog post comment, good lord lol).

I didn't pick up any vitriol. You're mostly just making yourself look super judgey, so congrats on letting us all know you don't respect writers.

I have ADHD I usually don't read much, but when I do, you can't get me to stop. I can't get me to stop.

It’s not a matter of being verbose for the sake of it, it’s that some thing either cannot or should not be condensed. Reading the CliffsNotes is not the same as reading the novel. “A Brief History of Time” cannot be a six paragraph summarization and still make sense.

I think it's sad that these young men (well, maybe Kanye's no longer young) are missing out on the creativity, inspiration, exploration, and diverse perspectives that come from reading. Kanye says he'd rather have a conversation with a person, but books can be a conversation with people we can no longer reach due to death, imprisonment, or a reclusive lifestyle. If you agree or disagree with the author, you're in dialogue with their work. Kanye might also say these perspectives aren't worth considering, but we can learn a great deal from the past or from those who are walking a different path.

Finally, I wonder how strictly the three men adhered to the book-free lifestyle. Are newspapers and magazines out because they contain multiple articles? What about short stories? They talk about books and reading as a punishment, which I simply can't relate to. Did high school English turn them off? Did they read books about their professions and get bored, or have they tried fiction? So many questions.

And it's sad with Kanye cause his mother headed the MFA program at a college in Chicago and had a PhD in black literature

“The keys to life are running and reading. When you're running, there's a little person that talks to you and says, "Oh I'm tired. My lung's about to pop. I'm so hurt. There's no way I can possibly continue." You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you're running. You will how to not quit when things get hard in your life.

For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There's no new problem you could have--with your parents, with school, with a bully. There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book.”

― Will Smith

If my mother were to judge books based on the author's skin color, I might hate reading too.

“Keep my wife’s name out your goddamn mouth” -Will Smith

That is sad. Ironically, Kanye recorded a guided meditation for Audible. But I guess it doesn't count as a book because it's spoken word and short?

Edit: Nevermind, it was Puff Daddy, not Kanye. I'm old and can't keep my celebs straight, but I'm working on that.

>Basically, he's writing how books are the only worthwhile form of the humanities

This is very much not what he writes. His argument is about how Kanye, SBF, and McElwee's complete dismissal of the value of books is connected to a larger cultural trend of anti-intellectualism. He thinks that this anti-intellectualism is linked to other trends (egoism, effective altruism) that are potentially harmful.