{"id":805,"date":"2014-06-14T09:13:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-14T17:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=805"},"modified":"2014-06-13T09:14:54","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T17:14:54","slug":"what-are-you-reading-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/14\/what-are-you-reading-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are You Reading, Stupid?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lest you start thinking you\u2019re an intelligent person with discerning tastes, let me remind you that you\u2019re not. You\u2019re an idiot. And I know you\u2019re an idiot because Slate<\/a><\/em> and Flavorwire<\/a><\/em> told me so. They didn\u2019t use the word \u201cidiot\u201d but then they didn\u2019t have to, because people who are intelligent and have discerning tastes can read between the lines. People like me!<\/p>\n

So, you\u2019re an idiot. You read Young Adult fiction, Donna Tart, and nothing else<\/em>. I put those last three words in italics to emphasize them. You should be ashamed of yourselves, and your idea that these books are the kinds of things that represent literature today is completely wrong. Don\u2019t you know that YOU are contributing to the death of literary criticism by buying books that other people will also end up buying?<\/p>\n

I mean, look at you. With your education and your job and your family and your, ugh, life. Are you on Reddit? Are you even on Tumblr? Then how in the HELL do you even KNOW what\u2019s even REAL? You wouldn\u2019t know good literature if it glued you to a chair and made you watch Shakespeare. Did you know that Teller of Penn & Teller fame is currently directing The Tempest<\/em>? Of course not: you read Divergent<\/em> and The Goldfinch<\/em> instead of listening to podcasts. Scum.<\/p>\n

You are scum. You read your books (plural!) and listen to your music (collective plural!) and watch your television shows, when the real, actual critics don\u2019t even own a TV. Who has time to own a TV when there\u2019s Netflix and Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime subscriptions to maintain on laptops? Who has time for, what are they called, sports? Who has time for sports when the World Cup is on in bars that sells beers you haven\u2019t even heard of<\/em>?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m avoiding the H word, because it would hurt your feelings, but I am so tempted to use it. You know the word I mean. Rhymes with \u201cdipster.\u201d You dipster. I haven\u2019t found it yet, because I only read websites even I haven\u2019t heard of<\/em> (like Flavorwire<\/em>), but I know there\u2019s a website that describes how my calling you the H word means I\u2019m an H word and admitting I\u2019m an H word means I\u2019m not really an H word and so you are one.<\/p>\n

The point is, you have got<\/em> to stop. Stop reading things that you enjoy. Stop getting so much satisfaction out of your entertainment choices. Stop being an idiot. Literary criticism (which, for the purpose of this essay and the ones on Slate<\/em> and Flavorwire<\/em> is the same as writin\u2019 reviews, even though it\u2019s not at all, even) will die if you don\u2019t start reading\u2026 well, reading things that are so good no plebian like you would read them.<\/p>\n

And if literary criticism dies, how will people adequately contextualize my essay about some essays that were about reviews of books that these essays say you shouldn\u2019t read? Idiot. Scum. Dipster.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lest you start thinking you\u2019re an intelligent person with discerning tastes, let me remind you that you\u2019re not. You\u2019re an idiot. And I know you\u2019re an idiot because Slate and Flavorwire told me so. They didn\u2019t use the word \u201cidiot\u201d but then they didn\u2019t have to, because people who are intelligent and have discerning tastes … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “What Are You Reading, Stupid?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-cZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}