Why read novels?

best life in category of achievable lives

dynomight.net/novels

Why should you read novels? We tell children they’re magic carpets for the mind / exercise for the soul instead of the body / lighthouses in the great sea of time. But aren’t they ultimately a form of entertainment?

Many years ago, I read Crime and Punishment. Here, with no research and no notes, is what I can remember about that book:

1. It was pretty good.

2. There was some guy, I think named Ras-something.

3. He was really angsty/edgy and lived in a small apartment or attic.

4. One day, for no particular reason, he killed an old woman.

5. Having done this random murder, he became even more angsty/edgy.

6. Then there was this police inspector guy.

7. The inspector kept coming after Ras-whoever and making extremely long philosophical rants.

8. Those rants may or may not have represented the personal views of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

9. I can’t remember how the book ended. Surely Ras-whoever didn’t live happily ever after? But was he caught or did he confess? No idea.

This is probably below average. I know people who seem to remember every detail of everything they read. But even if you’re one of them, so what? Is remembering those books better than remembering whatever else you would have done with your time if you hadn’t been reading?

And yet: If I’m on vacation and I spend an afternoon reading a novel where in the mountains or on a beach, I feel like I’m living my best life. Whereas if I spent an afternoon staring at short videos on my phone, I’m sure I’d feel like a gigantic loser. So what’s going on here?

Theory 1: Ye olde status

The obvious explanation is that there’s nothing intrinsically great about reading novels. The reason we think it’s great is that reading novels—at least the right ones—is high status. It’s a way of playing the Glass Bead Game, a way of collecting cultural capital for you to lord over other people who don’t have as much time or education as you do. It may feel like you “actually enjoy reading”, but that’s because you’re a desperate striver that subconsciously shape-shifts into whatever you think will make you look fancy. Apologize for reading. Apologize!

I think there is something in this. However, I’m also pretty sure it’s not the full explanation, and I’m bored to death with everyone trying to explain everything this way. So let’s move on.

Theory 2: Diminishing returns

Say you can’t read novels. Maybe because you’re illiterate, maybe because you have no attention span, maybe because you can’t tear yourself away from Candy Clicker. Now, say you cultivate the ability to read novels. Whatever issues you address in that process, it seems like it will clearly be good for you, right?

Under this theory, what’s important is having the ability to read novels. But said ability is acquired by reading novels, so read some novels.

Alternatively, say you could read novels, but you simply never have. It’s plausible that the first time you have the “novel” experience of taking photons into your eyes and mentally converting them into a story, this truly does feed your mind.

Both versions of this theory suggest that reading novels has diminishing returns. That fits nicely with the fact that many people push their children to read novels while not reading any themselves. But do we really believe that after you’ve read some number of novels, it’s pointless to read more?

Theory 3: Common language

I think Catcher in the Rye is a good but not great book. But I love talking about Catcher in the Rye because (1) all North Americans seem to have read it, and (2) whenever I ask someone to tell me how they feel about Holden Caulfield, I always seem to learn something about them.

(I find him sympathetic.)

If there’s a group of people talking about Catcher in the Rye—or The Three-Body Problem, or Infinite Jest, or Don Quixote—then you benefit from being able to participate. The cynic might argue that this is zero-sum status competition. But I don’t think that’s most of it. Because, at least in my social circles, people feel boorish talking about books if not everyone has read them. So these conversations only happen if everyone has read the book in question.

Ultimately, we’re all alone in the world, and trying to connect with each other by pushing air through our throat meat. With more shared cultural context, those meat sounds are more meaningful, so we can all feel less alone.

True. But shared context can come from other things, too, like traveling to the same places, or watching the same sports, or practicing the same skills or hobbies. So what makes books special? The two answers I see are:

1. Nothing. If you think they’re better than other types of cultural context, that’s because you’re a book person.

2. Books leave more room for interpretation. Maybe Don Quixote is a fanatic, maybe he’s an idealist, maybe he’s a “wise fool”. It’s debatable. But there’s no doubt who won the last World Cup.

I lean weakly towards the first answer. Novels are a useful form of social context. But that’s a side benefit. It’s not why we read most books.

Theory 4: Legible mind-space

Maybe novels are just another form of entertainment. OK. But say you tried to tell the same story as a novel or as movie / podcast / opera / interpretive dance performance. Different formats will be better in different ways. One advantage I see for novels is that they make it natural to explore the interior worlds of the characters.

Some movies have voice-overs where characters explain what they’re thinking. But this is generally considered cringe and a poor use of the medium. Meanwhile, many books are mostly about exploring what the characters are thinking.

Thoughts are worth exploring. If you want to explore thoughts, maybe novels are the best way to do that.

Aside: I’ve mentioned before that I think My Brilliant Friend is the best TV show ever made. Can I confess that I like it much more than the books it is based on? Because, like the books, the TV show involves a lot of what the main character is thinking, and even makes heavy use of voice-overs. So maybe other mediums have unrealized potential?

Theory 5: Purity of vision

Movies are expensive to make. To be financially viable, they need to target a large slice of the population. Movies also reflect the combined efforts of many people. Both of these mean that movies are a compromise between different visions.

Novels are usually written by one person. And they’re often written more for personal expression than to make money. After all, writing is fun. I mean—writing is hard, but would you rather spend an afternoon holding up a shotgun microphone, cleaning a movie star’s trailer, or writing a novel?

To quantify this, some searching suggests that around 10,000 feature films are released each year, as compared to around 1,000,000 novels. (Does one in 7,000 people really write a novel each year?) That’s two orders of magnitude. So if you want to hear a truly unique story, a pure vision of one person, maybe novels are where you’ll find it.

Theory 6: All these theories are stupid

Or: Maybe the point of reading War and Peace is that War and Peace is incredible and obviously one of the greatest pieces of art ever made in any medium. No one who reads War and Peace can question the value of what they’ve done. What are we talking about?

Fair. I definitely feel like I’m living my best life when I read War and Peace. But I also feel like I’m living an OK-ish life when I read a novel about Spenser, private investigator. And most novels most people read are closer to the Spenser than to War and Peace. And I still feel better spending an afternoon reading about Spenser than I would watching 99% of TV shows.

Theory 7: Dopamine

Or perhaps the difference is that reading is a thing you do rather than something you consume.

This theory holds than when spend an hour slurping up short-form video, you’re training yourself to sort of pull a lever in the hope that some reward is delivered to you. But if you read (or do watercolors, or meditate) you’re training yourself to calmly pursue long-term goals and to sustain attention in the face of complexity.

Sometimes I wonder if phones/apps are the most addictive thing ever created. I suspect that more people today are addicted to their phones today than were ever addicted to any drug other than caffeine or perhaps nicotine. And while a phone addiction is less physically harmful than tobacco, that phone addiction will eat a larger part of your soul.

I think this is a big part of the explanation.

Theory 8: Non-fungible time

In the end, I don’t think novels are the best way to spend your time. In my view no novel—not even War and Peace—is as good as a truly great conversation.

But great conversations are hard to create. Sometimes you’re sitting on a train, or laying in bed, or it’s just been a long day and you don’t have the energy to find a giant block of marble and pursue your dream of experimental sculpture. In these situations, maybe reading a novel is the best thing you could do in the category of things you could realistically do.

Exercise for the reader: Apply these theories to blog posts.