#trash intellectual

[maggotbroth]

i’m starting a new subculture called trash academia. all of us will just go around with broken glasses, scribbling notes on the back of take out menus and reading books we found in dumpsters

[maggotbroth]

this guy is living my dream

[maggotbroth]

dark academics read the classics because they want to engage in the Great Conversation of history and long to recognize themselves in the infinite expanse of space and time which renders their own experiences overwhelming and absurb

trash academics do that too but also because once the copyright has expired you can buy paperback versions of them for a dollar

[maggotbroth]

Here's the thing about audio books. They're fun and useful for lots of reasons and I understand the impulse towards inclusiveness in saying they are 'just as good as reading. " But audio books are, intrinsically, an interpretation of a book.

So many choices have to be made in the recording of a book. Pauses, tone, emphasis, these all form our understanding of a work. And that's without more obvious production choices like abridging, music, or character voices.

I adored the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy but when a friend wanted to play it on a long drive I couldn't stand to listen to it. The actress reading it was British and Lisbeth Salander was so firmly embedded in my mind as Swedish that the dissonance threw me ever time she spoke.

How much these choices effect the work is going to vary from book to book. Modern poetry will lose more and pulp novels will probably lose less. Some children's books are written with the intent of being read aloud.

There are even some books that might be improved by recording. For instance there is a production of Lolita read by Jeromy Irons (yes, HH from the 1997 film) that is so smooth and velvety that it might even make the point of the novel better than the original.

On the other hand take Schindler's List . I listened to it on tape and would probably never have finished it if the story hadn't just blithely carried on without my effort every time the narrative laid me flat with atrocity. But thats sort of the point of the book. Schindler's List is not supposed to be an easy read, it's supposed to make you feel things. It's supposed to require you to acknowledge the extremes of what humans can do to each other and still continue. By listening instead of reading I was not forced to confront that idea in the same way.

Not everybody reads and not everybody who does read is interested in interacting with literature at this level. That's fine! But if you're going to do so, if you're calling yourself an intellectual or an academic, you have to acknowledge that audiobooks are NOT reading and never can be.

[maggotbroth]

Why do we even call it academia? Light academia, dark academia, punk academia. Academia is a system. If we mean to use it as an aesthetic, a lifestyle, we mean intellectual.

[maggotbroth]

I've always argued that dark academia is essentially a reaction to fear of transgressing social barriers. Moving up the social ladder is inherently scary because it implies a change in values. You go off to school and become something else. Your morals are compromised; there’s usually a murder or at the very least a lot of drugs.

But you can create the same fear by moving down! The radical bohemian, or as we're calling it the trash academic, is just as scary. But you have to drop all ambition. College students are allowed to be poor because they're working toward something, rise and grind, pulling themselves up by their boot straps. So you've got to squash any semblance of that shit. You and your education exist outside of the whole academic system. Instead you literally pick your substinence from the waste and absurdity of modern capitalism and bc you do that you have the luxury of intellectual thought.