[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

How about you, dear MR member -- are you ever annoyed by writers who are supposed to be smart and aren't -- especially after reading writers who really are smart but tend to be dismissed rather than celebrated?

No. I don't worry about what other people suppose. I met this skinny dude. Years back. He was sitting under a tree and worrying about stuff. I said, "Let it go, Buddy. Attachment ties you down."

"I'd never be in a book like that," he said. "That looks so stupid."

You're lucky you had him. I'd have said, "Astonishing! I'd never fit in there."

That lack of experience with reading, coupled with an utterly cover-deep approach to content, is exactly what you find in universities all over America. Very often, the most dismal students are promoted over the thoughtful ones because they reassure their professors that, yes, indeed, the person at the lectern is the smartest person in the room.

I'd say that it's not just ego bolstering, but also a dislike of diversity despite preaching diversity. I would say that, but it would get us chained up in the dark and dreary political dungeon.

You see this piggybacking of mediocrity into the so-called literary world over and over, and that is why we're told to read books that will supposedly change our lives, only to disappoint us with their elementary wordplay, timid bohemianism and vocabularies reduced by ignorance rather than craft.

I tend to avoid such disappointments. "This book will change your life!" is decoded by me as "Never read this book!" If it can change my life via spiritual osmosis, then kudos to the author.