Hip and happy-Why I continue to read for knowledge (and pleasure)

For a person with no one taste in reading, it’s hard to decide what exactly constitutes my ‘guilty reading pleasure.’ I also hear that ‘real’ men don’t have guilty pleasures; it’s a girly thingy. The alpha males, apparently, have no qualms about confessing to their baser instincts up front. Perhaps in a patriarchal society like Nepal, it’s still easier for men to own up every potential source of their guilt, from watching porn at work to digging into Harold Robbins on their off days.



If only it was so straightforward. I’m now reading Stephen King, for the very first time, and with a fair bit of guilt. At least a dozen unread ‘serious’ titles beckon me from my study table: Alan Baker, Richard Feynman, Michael Foucault, Leo Rose. But for the moment I’ve latched firmly on to Insomnia, one of the 49 novels by the King of creeps.[break]



This guilt is hard to fathom. If it hadn’t been for Agatha Christie, the undisputed queen of the pulp, I wouldn’t even be reading today. No Tolstoy, no Rushdie, no Marquez. In my case, these established names in world literature were continuation from Christie, someone who inspired me to read in the first place.



So what explains this pang of remorse every time I pick up a mass-market novel these days? Could it be that with age I’ve learnt to put up pretentions, much like the men who occupy themselves with newspapers every morning, sometimes for hours on end, deluding themselves that they are absorbing ‘knowledge’ all the while?



Or do newspapers constitute their guilty reading pleasure, as they do for Frank McCourt, the highly acclaimed author of his childhood memoir Angela’s Ashes? Newspapers are guilty pleasures, says McCourt, because “they’re trash.” I’m a big daily consumer of newspapers myself: Kantipur, Nagarik, IHT (every morning); The Economist, Nepal, with a few vernaculars to boot (every week); not to mention the countless others I follow online. Reading newspapers, after all, is a part of my job. I can’t escape it.



Nor can I escape constantly questioning my reading habits. Do I gain anything at all for the hours spent on newspapers every morning? I ask myself whether King’s 700-page doorstopper is worth my attention. Yes, I would like to believe. I’m constantly adding to my knowledge by trying to pack in as much information as I can in the little time I spend reading newspapers. Patricia Cornwell, PD James and Stephen King, I justify for their adrenalin rush unavailable from Conrad, Joyce or Rushdie, the spice that whets the appetite of the millions of readers of mass-market, lowbrow fiction—a la Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel which is now the fastest selling paperback of all time.



Consider the opposite. I’m sure I’m not the only one to put on pretensions of a serious reader after finishing War and Peace. Despite the fact that at the end of 1,500 pages and 30 days of sleep-inducing read, I couldn’t remember the names of half its characters. Or had only the faintest idea of the underlying message of Tolstoy’s most well-known historical fiction.



Why is it that when I finish one of the ‘classics’ I come away with a sense of satisfaction? On the other hand, even if I’ve enjoyed a Grisham or a Cornwell tremendously, why is there a sense of loss when I turn over the last page? This keeps happening even though until now I haven’t been able to put a finger on what distinguishes a bestselling airport-lounge fiction from a critically acclaimed novel.



“Information, I am certain, isn’t wisdom, but is it even, in most cases, knowledge?” the great essayist Joseph Epstein asks in An Extremely Well Informed SOB. His answer, with particular reference to the information that can be gleaned from newspapers, is a resounding no.



But, like Epstein, I often find myself completely immersed (far too often for my liking) in a great newspaper article, a latest Hollywood blockbuster or a trashy magazine. Epstein believes it’s important to keep abreast of the latest trends shaping the world. He dips into contemporary pop culture once a while “in the hope that… I shall keep up with some of the things that preoccupy the culture in its wider, sometime more youthful, often wildly excessive aspects.” The idea, according to Epstein, is to ‘be hip’ while also being ‘knowledgeable’ – both important to understand the fast-changing world we live in.



This may be the reason I tend to brush off an advice regularly thrown my way: It’s about time I defined my reading ‘niche.’ I’ve come to believe that my quest for wisdom will be incomplete if I have to choose between ‘being hip’ and ‘being knowledgeable.’



For the moment, I’m perfectly happy to live in the grey zone. But if someday I do decide to carve out a niche, Stephen King most certainly won’t feature in it. Umm… or how about I get back to you after Insomnia?



The writer is the op-ed editor at Republica.

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