I have complained many times on this blog about mediocre fiction. I’ve also complained about the loss of the art of reading. Put simply, the average person has lost the ability to read. Combining the two, we need to realize that, in order to read better fiction, we must also learn how to read better.
In other words, there is a chain of causes and consequences. It goes in a way like this:
As you can see, there is a feedback loop here. Reading a book poorly will cause you to leave some erroneous feedback. That is, it will lead you to either downplay the importance of a high-quality book, or overestimate the merits of a mediocre one.
Subsequently, this will distort the book’s intrinsic value. In a world replete with noise, a mediocre book read by mediocre readers receives far more attention than a higher-quality book misunderstood by its mediocre readers. Inevitably, this facilitates the creation and propagation of mediocre literature, which leads back to poor reading.
It is a very vicious cycle. And, since art imitates life (which imitates art in another vicious cycle), this leads us to societal mediocrity.
(more…)