What, exactly, does a reading list say about about a person? I wouldn't have thought a reading list would be as revealing as, say, a person's habitual dietary intake or fashion preferences. I don't know what feeds this visceral assumption: maybe the fact that another word for "reading list" is "syllabus"?
But try this:
As often happens, however, my opinion seems to be in the minority. Though we have yet to see - so far as I am aware - a trend of biographies that unlock the secrets of the subject through the prism of their diet or their sartorial history (with exceptions, perhaps, for chefs like Julia Child and fashion designers like Coco Chanel respectively), we seem to be witnessing a spate of biographies that examine disparate subjects through the lens of his reading list.
I have already blogged about Timothy Ryback's Hitler's Private Library: The Books that Shaped His Life. Now we have Thomas Wright's Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde. Both these books appear to share some similarities: in both cases, the libraries of their subjects were dispersed and unreconstructable - leaving both ventures, therefore, to wander into the speculative a bit more than might be advisable for a book-length project of non-fiction. Moreover, as the subtitles of both books make clear, these authors seem to think they can make the case that books moulded these great men and that their reading lists therefore deserve at least part of the credit, or blame, for the men's accomplishments or crimes.
The notion seems rickety to me. As Michael Shae makes clear in his review of Built of Books, much of Wilde's reading took place in the course of his "thorough classical education." But thousands of men who read Greek and Latin didn't go on to seduce young men and write The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Similarly, Ryback catalogs Hitler's taste for reading military strategy, along with an assortment of lowbrow entertainment: right-wing pseudo-academic propaganda, pseudo-mystical polemics, and the usual smattering of porn, romance, and pulp. But this reading list doesn't explain why Hitler is responsible for the deaths of millions of people, while at least as many Republicans with comparable reading tastes are law-abiding, responsible citizens (if not the type you'd want to be determining your child's reading material at school).
Ultimately, I'm wading through a biography to learn what precisely allowed Wilde to use his classical education as a springboard to reach his creative apex, or what in Hilter's character responded so tragically to the malign influence of bad reading material. The reading list itself ought to be the periphery, not the center. It's a part of the backdrop - Victorian England; Germany between-the-Wars. That the reading list has become the focus of attention suggests an admission of defeat by the biographer: he doesn't have the answer I want to know.
It also suggests a fascination with books presaging - if not their extinction, then - their lessening influence: what were people like, back when they read books?
Is it a coincidence that, as people read less, they are also less able to dissect human character with precision?
But try this:
- Most mornings, she ate a single-egg, cheese omelet, along with half an avocado and half a papaya for breakfast.
- She alternated between wearing cardigans over collared shirts and cotton Indian kurtas.
- In an eight week period during the summer of 2009, she read The New York Review of Books, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, poems from Staying Alive, and White Mischief.
As often happens, however, my opinion seems to be in the minority. Though we have yet to see - so far as I am aware - a trend of biographies that unlock the secrets of the subject through the prism of their diet or their sartorial history (with exceptions, perhaps, for chefs like Julia Child and fashion designers like Coco Chanel respectively), we seem to be witnessing a spate of biographies that examine disparate subjects through the lens of his reading list.
I have already blogged about Timothy Ryback's Hitler's Private Library: The Books that Shaped His Life. Now we have Thomas Wright's Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde. Both these books appear to share some similarities: in both cases, the libraries of their subjects were dispersed and unreconstructable - leaving both ventures, therefore, to wander into the speculative a bit more than might be advisable for a book-length project of non-fiction. Moreover, as the subtitles of both books make clear, these authors seem to think they can make the case that books moulded these great men and that their reading lists therefore deserve at least part of the credit, or blame, for the men's accomplishments or crimes.
The notion seems rickety to me. As Michael Shae makes clear in his review of Built of Books, much of Wilde's reading took place in the course of his "thorough classical education." But thousands of men who read Greek and Latin didn't go on to seduce young men and write The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Similarly, Ryback catalogs Hitler's taste for reading military strategy, along with an assortment of lowbrow entertainment: right-wing pseudo-academic propaganda, pseudo-mystical polemics, and the usual smattering of porn, romance, and pulp. But this reading list doesn't explain why Hitler is responsible for the deaths of millions of people, while at least as many Republicans with comparable reading tastes are law-abiding, responsible citizens (if not the type you'd want to be determining your child's reading material at school).
Ultimately, I'm wading through a biography to learn what precisely allowed Wilde to use his classical education as a springboard to reach his creative apex, or what in Hilter's character responded so tragically to the malign influence of bad reading material. The reading list itself ought to be the periphery, not the center. It's a part of the backdrop - Victorian England; Germany between-the-Wars. That the reading list has become the focus of attention suggests an admission of defeat by the biographer: he doesn't have the answer I want to know.
It also suggests a fascination with books presaging - if not their extinction, then - their lessening influence: what were people like, back when they read books?
Is it a coincidence that, as people read less, they are also less able to dissect human character with precision?
Leave a comment