More than we can possibly know

I was intrigued yesterday by an article about philosophy courses available free on line. The article cited openculture.com (the title a subject in itself perhaps). The site is rife with ads for things you can buy, but there is a plethora of courses that can be played through iTunes (downloads available free at iTunes.com) an hour's lecture at a time. Under each category (free language lessons, free textbooks, free movies, etc.), you have to scroll down beyond the paid ads and find free options. I examined a Yale finance course , a French movie and an introduction to electrical engineering. Anybody with a computer can theoretically acquire a college education.

I am not likely to pursue electrical engineering or, to tell the truth, heavy philosophy courses. I may listen to some of the finance lectures, given that my economics education is dated while the financial world continues to churn.  I am drawn as well to some history, art, literature and language courses.

Most of all, I am impressed with the range of possibilities. Ah, but there is no free lunch, as economists are fond of saying. Without the structure of an institution, do we have the discipline to concentrate and absorb all these possibilities?

Further, how much do we need to know? Want to know? In a world of more food than we can possibly eat, how do we plan our meals?

Are we what we read?

Recently, I have encountered three commentaries that  expressed views on how our reading, particularly fiction, becomes part of us and changes us. Michael Dirda, writing in his blog in The Washington Post, says he doesn't feel he's actually read a book until he writes about it. "Composing a review or an essay seems the final stage of reading, a way or summarizing my experience of the novel, biography or work of history." His reading leads to creative writing. He muses that others may join book clubs for this reason.

Second, an article that reached me via Zite.com, an aggregating site that creates a cyber magazine based on the user's expressed and revealed tastes, described a study by Keith Oakley and Raymond Mar at the University of Toronto. The study demonstrated personality changes from reading a Chekhov story. Mar describes their central assumption, "When people are reading literary fiction, they're creating in their mind a simulation of experience...." They applied a personality tests to students before and after they read either a Chekhov story or a summary of basic plot points. Reading the story had a small effect on personality (after all, it was only one story), and the plot points did not. However, the changes varied among individuals. The question is how much effect does habitual reading of literature have on our personalities?

Finally, at Chautaugua Institution in July, I attended a lecture in the literary program in which a novelist asserted that fiction builds the capacity for empathy by immersing the reader in others' experiences. Fiction is valuable because it does this he feels. I agree and would add that history is also valuable for this reason.

Dirda worries that reading groups could also become pressure groups, not a worry I share. But recently I decided not to read Daniel Silva's thrillers anymore because the most recent one contained excessive gratuitous violence in my opinion. Could habitual reading of violent fiction have a negative personality effect?

Should we begin to think of changes in ourselves as part of the experience of reading?

Odes to Boredom: Because it's August?

This past week, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal ran articles extolling the virtues of boredom. In the Times, Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon, revisits a lifetime of boredom, including interminable corporate meetings, before Dilbert. Adams lauds his good fortune to have been bored so often, "I've noticed that my best ideas bubble up when the outside world fails in its primary job of freightening, wounding or entertaining me."

He fears for contemporary society because  iPads, iPods and iPhones mean that we can always avoid boredom. Lack of innovation and creativity will follow with dire consequences for society and the economy.

In the Journal, Peter Toohey, a professor of Greek and Roman studies and the author of "Boredom: A Lively History," explains that boredom has a long history. He cites a third century Roman plaque erected by citizens who honored a consul of Campania because he had saved them from "endless boredom." Better not to dwell too much on how he entertained them. (iDevices may have their uses.) For us, Toohey finds boredom useful as a warning that life is not being properly lived and thus needs to be changed before the dire consequences, possibly violence or illness, ensue. As such, he also finds boredom to be a spur to creativity.

Ah, so be thankful for suffocating weather, vacationing friends,  August suspension of meetings, interminable repeats of the same story on TV news and  panels of experts repeating that same news.  If all else fails, watch the grass turn brown until your creative juices stir. But beware of  iDevices!

The writer and the reader seek escape in suspense, character and plot

Joanna Kavenna wrote a long article about John Banville in the  New Yorker a few weeks ago.  Banville is a serious novelist, winner of the Booker Prize for The Sea, who also writes mysteries. He is quoted as saying that one day he sat down and wrote 1500 words of a mystery in place of his usual 200 words for his literary novels.  And he has continued to write mysteries. Kavenna describes his literary novels as prose poetry, without too much concern for character and plot. I bogged down in Banville's latest such novel, The Untouchable, and turned to his latest mystery, A Death in Summer. He wrote it under the name Benjamin Black.

So, readers, what does it mean if both writer and reader feel the need to escape serious literature?