"To enlighten and to entertain: what else is there? And while good books—even so-so books—serve both functions, if you ever have to choose one over the other, keep in mind that a book that entertains without enlightening can still be a guilty pleasure, but a book that enlightens without entertaining is algebra."
Pete Dexter in a bizarre, rambling review in the NY Times.
While I can understand the impulse—and this is reblogged from one of my favorite people on Tumblr—this quote really pisses me off.
First, look at the review: it wasn’t linked in the original post and I had to track it down, either because the omission was accidental or because it’s a really bad review—on par with Kottke’s bizarre effort for the 2010 Tournament of Books.
Review aside, though, there’s the blatant shitting on algebra. Those are words written by a man who has never had the pleasure of seeing the world click into place, to seeing a set of facts rearrange themselves into something that smells of making sense. I really enjoyed math class and science class, dammit.
More widely, Dexter seems to be equating pleasure with entertainment, as accidental and brutal an indictment of modern culture as I’ve ever seen. I’m all about spectacle and glitz—goodness knows I’ve seen so many movies just for that—but to deny everything else is to impoverish yourself. To insist on a spoonful of sugar with every bit of medicine is infantilizing us, even if we’ve already been infantilized by so many others. (See: pretty much every commercial I’ve seen while watching football today.)
Alayna’s blog is awesome because it’s about celebrating exactly those pleasures that aren’t entertainment: the quiet glow of a campfire, hearing a forest breeze, the comfort and relief of returning home after a long day. Which is why it’s weird to see this quote there. :(
