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A review by pyrrhicspondee
n+1; What We Should Have Known: Two Discussions by Andrew S. Jacobs, Keith Gessen, n+1
3.0
I'm really glad I read "No Regrets" first. This book frustrated me b/c it started out with a bunch of dudes squeeing over Henry Miller, so . . . no thanks, I'll read some women on the canon instead. But the very thing that "No Regrets" is missing at the end--critical thought on the importance of class and economic privilege--"What We Should Have Known" spends tons of time discussing.
Most helpful to me in here was a discussion of what it felt like to find a book that helped create an intellectual structure for understanding all kinds of other books. For most of these writers, those books tended to be Marxist histories. I've been thinking a lot about the old saw that "first you learn to read and then you read to learn." And perhaps we need a third step that characterizes how for the first decade or two of being a person who reads to learn you will find your brain collecting ideas but not having the necessary context to connect them. Until you find that structure that can connect the dots--probably by reading a book--and suddenly everything you read becomes part of this greater understanding of how culture and people work with and against each other in interconnected webs of thought and art and theory. So, "first you learn to read, then you read to learn. Then, one day, all the things you've learned from reading will come together in a unified theory of the world." (That was not graceful, but whatever. Hopefully you see where I'm going.)
Most helpful to me in here was a discussion of what it felt like to find a book that helped create an intellectual structure for understanding all kinds of other books. For most of these writers, those books tended to be Marxist histories. I've been thinking a lot about the old saw that "first you learn to read and then you read to learn." And perhaps we need a third step that characterizes how for the first decade or two of being a person who reads to learn you will find your brain collecting ideas but not having the necessary context to connect them. Until you find that structure that can connect the dots--probably by reading a book--and suddenly everything you read becomes part of this greater understanding of how culture and people work with and against each other in interconnected webs of thought and art and theory. So, "first you learn to read, then you read to learn. Then, one day, all the things you've learned from reading will come together in a unified theory of the world." (That was not graceful, but whatever. Hopefully you see where I'm going.)