Customer Reviews

The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Counterpoint)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is not a book "against reading" - take the title with a pinch of salt. In fact, if you love to read, you'll love this book. It's a witty, clever account of Brottman's own love-hate relationship with books, with lots of sidetracks and digressions about the kinds of books she loves, and why she loves them. You'll read it in one sitting - and end up with a whole new reading list. Highly recommended for reading addicts and other hopeless bibliophiles.

It's easy to speak breathlessly about the heady pleasures of reading, but Brottman, for most of The Solitary Vice, anyway, provides a wise corrective. No, she is not completely "against reading", but she does persuasively argue that the act of reading (literature) isn't the intrinsically beneficial, spiritual edifying practice it's often depicted as by overzealous educators. Through both humorous memoir (that this reader related to uncomfortably) and sociological evidence, she effectively makes this simple point and from there suggests some implications for how exactly we might more realistically appreciate the pleasures of the novel.

I only give four stars because the book is, in my opinion, padded with a lot of illustrations and material that only has a tangental connection to the main argument. Nearly half of the book is devoted to the discussion of a few somewhat arcane genres of "low culture" reading - the celebrity confessional, the true-crime novel, the psychological profile - for reasons that are hardly justified (although there are a few weak attempts) in terms of the main thesis of the book. At times these discussions are rewarding, as when her survey of author biographies points out that many celebrated writers of renown (Nabokov, Henry James, etc) were widely considered to be boorish and ironically lacking in self-knowledge, but it's a quirky sampling of topics.

Knowing beforehand that this was not actually a condemnation of reading but rather a challenge to conventional wisdom, I expected so much more from this essay, and feel compelled to write a review because of my surprise and disappointment. Neither the table of contents nor editorial reviews make clear that most of this book is devoted to singing the praises of gossip, in one written form or another. The first few chapters however are somewhat interesting and explain my two-star rating. The first chapter relates the author's decidedly strange adolescence spent confined in an attic with books as her only companions; the second chapter deals with book collections and libraries, and readers' various approaches to reading; the third mostly dishes on so-called classic works of literature and may help lighten social pressures to pretend familiarity with books that often are arduous to read and mostly disconnected from current reality (for some reason, mainly that Brottman happens to love his works, Shakespeare is exempt from her otherwise sweeping disapproval). Later chapters however focus almost exclusively on gossip of one form or another. Brottman is adamant that everyone loves gossip; in her opinion, anyone claiming otherwise is either lying or delusional (this is, no doubt, a comforting stance for gossip lovers). One chapter is thus devoted to the wonders of celebrity tell-alls and confessionals (in which category she seems to lump all memoirs), another to unauthorized authors' biographies (the sleaziest, the better), and a third to true crime stories. Brottman is so enamored of gossip that I counted 12 (twelve!) occurrences of the word in one page and ten (10!) more in the very next page. Now, that's a lot of gossip, and a definite lack of editorial guidance. Not long after that, since I clearly was no longer « engaged », I decided to take the author's own word of advice and simply gave up.

I have to admit that I haven't quite finished reading this book yet. However, I certainly won't be giving up on it; my place is securely held by a (homemade) bookmark and I have been making notes (in a notebook, not in the margins - although I sometimes do that). These aspects of our reading habits are just some of the many that Brottman reflects upon in this fascinating book.
This text will appeal to many types of reader. Academics in any discipline which asks students to read some kind of literary material will find much to think about here. The book reminded me of the experience of leading seminars in which students hadn't read texts like "Paradise Lost" or "Gulliver's Travels". I was shocked but I shouldn't have been. Although Brottman may be too iconoclastic for some, she puts the contrarian aspects of her case very well.
The voracious general reader will love this book and many will (like me) identify with the author's account of her adolescent love of reading and the social withdrawal that it encouraged.
Brottman's championing of reading what you enjoy and nothing else has upset some Amazon reviewers, but not this one. She is in fact in tune with current research (eg look at the UK scheme "Reading Connects") which says that reading for pleasure is what helps students to make academic progress and can actually enable students from less privileged social backgrounds outperform their more fortunate peers. I work in a school and I unashamedly encourage students to read magazines, graphic novels, genre fiction (how can you participate in modern culture if you never read vampire books?), celebrity biographies, blogs and (of course) twitter and facebook!
The first page is really funny - making a link between masturbation and reading.
This book deserves a very wide readership.

The original thesis, that reading is not intrinsically salutary, and the subsequent chapters on genres the author loves may not hang together as a sustained and cohesive argument, but Brottman's enthusiasm and her nose for compelling information make this a bit of a blast.

This book is interesting for its "contrarian" position, that reading is incorrectly promoted as being useful for a "better" life, that is, better pay, etc. However, I find it odd to have The Brother Karamazov ascribed to both Dostoevsky And Tolstoy in the "Works Cited and Sources". Their collaboration on that classic is definitely a untold story in itself!!!!

Brottmann challenges lazy thinking with provocative, well-researched and interesting arguments. The writing in almost all of her works is succinct, straight-shooting and compelling without being condescending or snobby. She is by far one of the great thinkers in modern counterculture and I pick up her books every time I see them.

This was my first diversion away from her more commonly available film analysis books. OFFENSIVE FILMS was the book that turned me on to her initially. This book is about the intimate process of reading, why we do it, how it affects our minds, our social/psychosexual interactions. There are points that could be argued but she asks the right questions and thoughtfully debates them.