schopenhauer's essay on reading and books

On Books and Reading

Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with riches. The poor man is restrained by poverty and need: labor occupies his thoughts, and takes the place of knowledge. But rich men who are ignorant live for their lusts only, and are like the beasts of the field; as may be seen every day: and they can also be reproached for not having used wealth and leisure for that which gives them their greatest value.

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid. For to occupy every spare moment in reading, and to do nothing but read, is even more paralyzing to the mind than constant manual labor, which at least allows those engaged in it to follow their own thoughts. A spring never free from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses its elasticity; and so does the mind if other people's thoughts are constantly forced upon it. Just as you can ruin the stomach and impair the whole body by taking too much nourishment, so you can overfill and choke the mind by feeding it too much. The more you read, the fewer are the traces left by what you have read: the mind becomes like a tablet crossed over and over with writing. There is no time for ruminating, and in no other way can you assimilate what you have read. If you read on and on without setting your own thoughts to work, what you have read can not strike root, and is generally lost. It is, in fact, just the same with mental as with bodily food: hardly the fifth part of what one takes is assimilated. The rest passes off in evaporation, respiration and the like.

The result of all this is that thoughts put on paper are nothing more than footsteps in the sand: you see the way the man has gone, but to know what he saw on his walk, you want his eyes.

There is no quality of style that can be gained by reading writers who possess it; whether it be persuasiveness, imagination, the gift of drawing comparisons, boldness, bitterness, brevity, grace, ease of expression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic or naive manner, and the like. But if these qualities are already in us, exist, that is to say, potentially, we can call them forth and bring them to consciousness; we can learn the purposes to which they can be put; we can be strengthened in our inclination to use them, or get courage to do so; we can judge by examples the effect of applying them, and so acquire the correct use of them; and of course it is only when we have arrived at that point that we actually possess these qualities. The only way in which reading can form style is by teaching us the use to which we can put our own natural gifts. We must have these gifts before we begin to learn the use of them. Without them, reading teaches us nothing but cold, dead mannerisms and makes us shallow imitators.

The strata of the earth preserve in rows the creatures which lived in former ages; and the array of books on the shelves of a library stores up in like manner the errors of the past and the way in which they have been exposed. Like those creatures, they too were full of life in their time, and made a great deal of noise; but now they are stiff and fossilized, and an object of curiosity to the literary palaeontologist alone.

Herodotus relates that Xerxes wept at the sight of his army, which stretched further than the eye could reach, in the thought that of all these, after a hundred years, not one would be alive. And in looking over a huge catalogue of new books, one might weep at thinking that, when ten years have passed, not one of them will be heard of.

It is in literature as in life: wherever you turn, you stumble at once upon the incorrigible mob of humanity, swarming in all directions, crowding and soiling everything, like flies in summer. Hence the number, which no man can count, of bad books, those rank weeds of literature, which draw nourishment from the corn and choke it. The time, money and attention of the public, which rightfully belong to good books and their noble aims, they take for themselves: they are written for the mere purpose of making money or procuring places. So they are not only useless; they do positive mischief. Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature has no other aim than to get a few shillings out of the pockets of the public; and to this end author, publisher and reviewer are in league.

Let me mention a crafty and wicked trick, albeit a profitable and successful one, practised by litterateurs, hack writers, and voluminous authors. In complete disregard of good taste and the true culture of the period, they have succeeded in getting the whole of the world of fashion into leading strings, so that they are all trained to read in time, and all the same thing, viz., the newest books ; and that for the purpose of getting food for conversation in the circles in which they move. This is the aim served by bad novels, produced by writers who were once celebrated, as Spindler, Bulwer Lytton, Eugene Sue. What can be more miserable than the lot of a reading public like this, always bound to peruse the latest works of extremely commonplace persons who write for money only, and who are therefore never few in number? and for this advantage they are content to know by name only the works of the few superior minds of all ages and all countries. Literary newspapers, too, are a singularly cunning device for robbing the reading public of the time which, if culture is to be attained, should be devoted to the genuine productions of literature, instead of being occupied by the daily bungling commonplace persons.

Hence, in regard to reading, it is a very important thing to be able to refrain. Skill in doing so consists in not taking into one's hands any book merely because at the time it happens to be extensively read; such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise, and may even attain to several editions in the first and last year of their existence. Consider, rather, that the man who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience; be careful to limit your time for reading, and devote it exclusively to the works of those great minds of all times and countries, who o'ertop the rest of humanity, those whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct. You can never read bad literature too little, nor good literature too much. Bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. Because people always read what is new instead of the best of all ages, writers remain in the narrow circle of the ideas which happen to prevail in their time; and so the period sinks deeper and deeper into its own mire.

There are at all times two literatures in progress, running side by side, but little known to each other; the one real, the other only apparent. The former grows into permanent literature; it is pursued by those who live for science or poetry; its course is sober and quiet, but extremely slow; and it produces in Europe scarcely a dozen works in a century; these, however, are permanent. The other kind is pursued by persons who live on science or poetry; it goes at a gallop with much noise and shouting of partisans; and every twelve-month puts a thousand works on the market. But after a few years one asks, Where are they? where is the glory which came so soon and made so much clamor? This kind may be called fleeting, and the other, permanent literature.

In the history of politics, half a century is always a considerable time; the matter which goes to form them is ever on the move; there is always something going on. But in the history of literature there is often a complete standstill for the same period; nothing has happened, for clumsy attempts don't count. You are just where you were fifty years previously.

To explain what I mean, let me compare the advance of knowledge among mankind to the course taken by a planet. The false paths on which humanity usually enters after every important advance are like the epicycles in the Ptolemaic system, and after passing through one of them, the world is just where it was before it entered it. But the great minds, who really bring the race further on its course do not accompany it on the epicycles it makes from time to time. This explains why posthumous fame is often bought at the expense of contemporary praise, and vice versa . An instance of such an epicycle is the philosophy started by Fichte and Schelling, and crowned by Hegel's caricature of it. This epicycle was a deviation from the limit to which philosophy had been ultimately brought by Kant; and at that point I took it up again afterwards, to carry it further. In the intervening period the sham philosophers I have mentioned and some others went through their epicycle, which had just come to an end; so that those who went with them on their course are conscious of the fact that they are exactly at the point from which they started.

This circumstance explains why it is that, every thirty years or so, science, literature, and art, as expressed in the spirit of the time, are declared bankrupt. The errors which appear from time to time amount to such a height in that period that the mere weight of their absurdity makes the fabric fall; whilst the opposition to them has been gathering force at the same time. So an upset takes place, often followed by an error in the opposite direction. To exhibit these movements in their periodical return would be the true practical aim of the history of literature: little attention, however, is paid to it. And besides, the comparatively short duration of these periods makes it difficult to collect the data of epochs long gone by, so that it is most convenient to observe how the matter stands in one's own generation. An instance of this tendency, drawn from physical science, is supplied in the Neptunian geology of Werter.

But let me keep strictly to the example cited above, the nearest we can take. In German philosophy, the brilliant epoch of Kant was immediately followed by a period which aimed rather at being imposing than at convincing. Instead of being thorough and clear, it tried to be dazzling, hyperbolical, and, in a special degree, unintelligible: instead of seeking truth, it intrigued. Philosophy could make no progress in this fashion; and at last the whole school and its method became bankrupt. For the effrontery of Hegel and his fellows came to such a pass,—whether because they talked such sophisticated nonsense, or were so unscrupulously puffed, or because the entire aim of this pretty piece of work was quite obvious,—that in the end there was nothing to prevent charlatanry of the whole business from becoming manifest to everybody: and when, in consequence of certain disclosures, the favor it had enjoyed in high quarters was withdrawn, the system was openly ridiculed. This most miserable of all the meagre philosophies that have ever existed came to grief, and dragged down with it into the abysm of discredit, the systems of Fichte and Schelling which had preceded it. And so, as far as Germany is concerned, the total philosophical incompetence of the first half of the century following upon Kant is quite plain: and still the Germans boast of their talent for philosophy in comparison with foreigners, especially since an English writer has been so maliciously ironical as to call them "a nation of thinkers."

For an example of the general system of epicycles drawn from the history of art, look at the school of sculpture which flourished in the last century and took its name from Bernini, more especially at the development of it which prevailed in France. The ideal of this school was not antique beauty, but commonplace nature: instead of the simplicity and grace of ancient art, it represented the manners of a French minuet.

This tendency became bankrupt when, under Winkelman's direction, a return was made to the antique school. The history of painting furnishes an illustration in the first quarter of the century, when art was looked upon merely as a means and instrument of mediaeval religious sentiment, and its themes consequently drawn from ecclesiastical subjects alone: these, however, were treated by painters who had none of the true earnestness of faith, and in their delusion they followed Francesco Francia, Pietro Perugino, Angelico da Fiesole and others like them, rating them higher even than the really great masters who followed. It was in view of this terror, and because in poetry an analogous aim had at the same time found favor, that Goethe wrote his parable Pfaffenspiel . This school, too, got the reputation of being whimsical, became bankrupt, and was followed by a return to nature, which proclaimed itself in genre pictures and scenes of life of every kind, even though it now and then strayed into what was vulgar.

The progress of the human mind in literature is similar. The history of literature is for the most part like the catalogue of a museum of deformities; the spirit in which they keep best is pigskin. The few creatures that have been born in goodly shape need not be looked for there. They are still alive, and are everywhere to be met with in the world, immortal, and with their years ever green. They alone form what I have called real literature; the history of which, poor as it is in persons, we learn from our youth up out of the mouths of all educated people, before compilations recount it for us.

As an antidote to the prevailing monomania for reading literary histories, in order to be able to chatter about everything, without having any real knowledge at all, let me refer to a passage in Lichtenberg's works (vol. II., p. 302), which is well worth perusal.

I believe that the over-minute acquaintance with the history of science and learning, which is such a prevalent feature of our day, is very prejudicial to the advance of knowledge itself. There is pleasure in following up this history; but as a matter of fact, it leaves the mind, not empty indeed, but without any power of its own, just because it makes it so full. Whoever has felt the desire, not to fill up his mind, but to strengthen it, to develop his faculties and aptitudes, and generally, to enlarge his powers, will have found that there is nothing so weakening as intercourse with a so-called litterateur, on a matter of knowledge on which he has not thought at all, though he knows a thousand little facts appertaining to its history and literature. It is like reading a cookery-book when you are hungry. I believe that so-called literary history will never thrive amongst thoughtful people, who are conscious of their own worth and the worth of real knowledge. These people are more given to employing their own reason than to troubling themselves to know how others have employed theirs. The worst of it is that, as you will find, the more knowledge takes the direction of literary research, the less the power of promoting knowledge becomes; the only thing that increases is pride in the possession of it. Such persons believe that they possess knowledge in a greater degree than those who really possess it. It is surely a well-founded remark, that knowledge never makes its possessor proud. Those alone let themselves be blown out with pride, who incapable of extending knowledge in their own persons, occupy themselves with clearing up dark points in its history, or are able to recount what others have done. They are proud, because they consider this occupation, which is mostly of a mechanical nature, the practice of knowledge. I could illustrate what I mean by examples, but it would be an odious task.

Still, I wish some one would attempt a tragical history of literature, giving the way in which the writers and artists, who form the proudest possession of the various nations which have given them birth, have been treated by them during their lives. Such a history would exhibit the ceaseless warfare, which what was good and genuine in all times and countries has had to wage with what was bad and perverse. It would tell of the martyrdom of almost all those who truly enlightened humanity, of almost all the great masters of every kind of art: it would show us how, with few exceptions, they were tormented to death, without recognition, without sympathy, without followers; how they lived in poverty and misery, whilst fame, honor, and riches, were the lot of the unworthy; how their fate was that of Esau, who while he was hunting and getting venison for his father, was robbed of the blessing by Jacob, disguised in his brother's clothes, how, in spite of all, they were kept up by the love of their work, until at last the bitter fight of the teacher of humanity is over, until the immortal laurel is held out to him, and the hour strikes when it can be said:

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Feeding Mind, Pursuing Truth

Schopenhauer’s 7 pieces of advice for readers.

• January 26, 2016

In the news, we often hear distressing statistics about how few books Americans read in a given year. As a result, we tend to be ecstatic if people simply read at all.

But intellectual growth requires more than that; it requires that one becomes not only a reader, but a mature reader.

In his famous essay “On Reading and Books,” the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) offers 7 timeless pieces advice on the dos and don’ts of being a mature reader:

1) Don’t read without reflection.

“It is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.”

2) Don’t waste time with bad books.

“The art of  not  reading is highly important. This consists in not taking a book into one’s hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time…

In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.”

3) Don’t read only new books.

“What can be more miserable than the fate of a reading public of this kind, that feels always impelled to read the latest writings of extremely commonplace authors who write for money only, and therefore exist in numbers?…

It is because people will only read what is the newest instead of what is the best of all ages, that writers remain in the narrow circle of prevailing ideas, and that the age sinks deeper and deeper in its own mire.”

4) Don’t only read secondary sources.

“Books are written sometimes about this, sometimes about that great thinker of former times, and the public reads these books, but not the works of the man himself.”

5) Don’t just buy books; read them!

“It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents.”

6) Reread important books.

“ Repetitio est mater studiorum . Any kind of important book should immediately be read twice, partly because one grasps the matter in its entirety the second time, and only really understands the beginning when the end is known; and partly because in reading it the second time one’s temper and mood are different, so that one gets another impression; it may be that one sees the matter in another light.”

7) Read the classics.

“There is nothing that so greatly recreates the mind as the works of the old classic writers. Directly one has been taken up, even if it is only for half-an-hour, one feels as quickly refreshed, relieved, purified, elevated, and strengthened as if one had refreshed oneself at a mountain stream. Is this due to the perfections of the old languages, or to the greatness of the minds whose works have remained unharmed and untouched for centuries? Perhaps to both combined. This I know, directly we stop learning the old languages (as is at present threatening) a new class of literature will spring up, consisting of writing that is more barbaric, stupid, and worthless than has ever yet existed.”

Daniel Lattier

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• > Schopenhauer: Parerga and Paralipomena
• > On reading and books

Book contents

• Frontmatter
• General editor's preface
• Editorial notes and references
• Introduction
• Notes on text and translation
• Bibliography
• PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA, VOLUME 2
• Sporadic yet systematically ordered thoughts on multifarious topics
• Chapter 1 On philosophy and its method
• Chapter 2 On logic and dialectic
• Chapter 3 Some thoughts concerning the intellect in general and in every respect
• Chapter 4 Some observations on the antithesis of the thing in itself and appearance
• Chapter 5 Some words on pantheism
• Chapter 6 On philosophy and natural science
• Chapter 7 On colour theory
• Chapter 8 On ethics
• Chapter 9 On jurisprudence and politics
• Chapter 10 On the doctrine of the indestructibility of our true essence by death
• Chapter 11 Additional remarks on the doctrine of the nothingness of existence
• Chapter 12 Additional remarks on the doctrine of the suffering of the world
• Chapter 13 On suicide
• Chapter 14 Additional remarks on the doctrine of the affirmation and negation of the will to life
• Chapter 15 On religion
• Chapter 16 Some remarks on Sanskrit literature
• Chapter 17 Some archaeological observations
• Chapter 18 Some mythological observations
• Chapter 19 On the metaphysics of the beautiful and aesthetics
• Chapter 20 On judgement, criticism, approbation and fame
• Chapter 21 On learning and the learned
• Chapter 22 Thinking for oneself
• Chapter 23 On writing and style
• Chapter 24 On reading and books
• Chapter 25 On language and words
• Chapter 26 Psychological remarks
• Chapter 27 On women
• Chapter 28 On education
• Chapter 29 On physiognomy
• Chapter 30 On noise and sounds
• Chapter 31 Similes, parables and fables
• Some verses
• Versions of Schopenhauer's text
• Glossary of names

Chapter 24 - On reading and books

from PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA, VOLUME 2

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2015

Ignorance only degrades mankind when it is encountered in the company of wealth. The poor man is limited by his poverty and plight; his achievements take the place of knowledge and occupy his thoughts. On the other hand, wealthy men who are ignorant live merely for their pleasures and resemble animals, as can be seen every day. Added to this is the accusation that wealth and leisure were not used for what grants them the greatest possible value.

When we read someone else thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. This is like the pupil who in learning to write traces with his pen the strokes made in pencil by the teacher. Accordingly in reading we are for the most part absolved of the work of thinking. This is why we sense relief when we transition from preoccupation with our own thoughts to reading. But during reading our mind is really only the playground of the thoughts of others. What remains when these finally move on? It stems from this that whoever reads very much and almost the whole day, but in between recovers by thoughtless pastime, gradually loses the ability to think on his own – as someone who always rides forgets in the end how to walk. But such is the case of many scholars: they have read themselves stupid. For constant reading immediately taken up again in every free moment is even more mentally paralysing than constant manual labour, since in the latter we can still muse about our own thoughts. But just as a coiled spring finally loses its elasticity through the sustained pressure of a foreign body, so too the mind through the constant force of other people's thoughts. And just as one ruins the stomach by too much food and so harms the entire body, so too we can overfill and choke the mind with too much mental food. For the more one reads, the fewer traces are left behind in the mind by what was read; it becomes like a tablet on which many things have been written over one another. Therefore we do not reach the point of rumination; but only through this do we assimilate what we have read, just as food does not nourish us through eating but through digestion.

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• On reading and books
• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Edited and translated by Adrian Del Caro , University of Tennessee
• Edited by Christopher Janaway , University of Southampton
• Book: Schopenhauer: <I>Parerga and Paralipomena</I>
• Online publication: 05 November 2015
• Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139016889.030

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The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

Episode 94: Schopenhauer on Reading, Writing, and Thinking

May 22, 2014 by Mark Linsenmayer 17 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:33 — 91.2MB)

Is the best way to do philosophy (or any art) to self-consciously build on the work of others to advance the genre? Schopenhauer says no! Geniuses are solitary, original, authentic, naive thinkers. They write because they have something to say, not because they’re being paid. They don’t read too much for fear of being overwhelmed by their influences, and certainly don’t try to remember what they read too well like a scholar would. They think before writing, and get at perennial truths from their own, uniquely grown perspective. So don’t burden them with responsibilities like jobs and families, okay?

Mark, Wes, and Dylan try to figure out whether these harsh commandments hold water or whether S. is just giving excuses for his own unpopularity. Read more about it and get the essays .

End song: “Drake’s Song” from The Maytricks (1992) (chords: Brian Drake, lyrics/melody: Mark) Get the whole album free .

Please support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation .

May 23, 2014 at 3:45 pm

Really good discussion. You’ve managed to integrate your life experience into your philosophical reflections, without the philosophical reflections losing exactness, which not everybody accomplishes.

May 23, 2014 at 5:27 pm

Concerning mark’s final comment, i guess the counter to accusations of uselessness of said activity, is the aesthetic justification of life. Rather then utility towards progress of mankind, life justifies itself by being joyful. That’s where the whole thing about authenticity, embodied thruths, style that fit an individual character come in. I can definately see a way in which valuing utility above anything else can lead to a kind of life-weariness, because it typically entails making a lot of compromises and following conventions that might be at odds with ones character… The glimmering in Schopenhauer’s eyes is interesting.

May 23, 2014 at 9:15 pm

Bummed about the Nozick episode. Is Steve Metcalf going to come back for the episode redo?

May 25, 2014 at 9:47 am

One of the best episodes in a while. Interesting discussion.

May 26, 2014 at 11:40 am

Relevant to Wes’s mention of Led Zeppelin and the fuzzy line between originality-via-synthesis and rip-off —

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-15/led-zeppelins-stairway-to-heaven-vs-dot-spirits-taurus-a-reckoning

May 26, 2014 at 12:36 pm

So, if Zeppelin stole “Stairway to Heaven” from Randy California, who did California steal it from? Is nothing or everything original?

I guess the copyright process of novels gets closest to the problem and solution, in that it is hard to copy the idea of Blood Meridian. We couldn’t accuse McCarthy of stealing the concept from Melville’s Moby-Dick, though there are comparisons:

“In the entire range of American literature, only Moby-Dick bears comparison to Blood Meridian. Both are epic in scope, cosmically resonant, obsessed with open space and with language, exploring vast uncharted distances with a fanatically patient minuteness. Both manifest a sublime visionary power that is matched only by still more ferocious irony. Both savagely explode the American dream of manifest destiny (sic) of racial domination and endless imperial expansion. But if anything, McCarthy writes with a yet more terrible clarity than does Melville.”—Steven Shaviro, “A Reading of Blood Meridian”

(But maybe McCarthy copied the underlying philosophy from Nietzsche and is thus unoriginal? And so it goes . . .)

May 27, 2014 at 8:25 am

I don’t know. I’m confident that it’s possible to distinguish between “informed by” and “copied from”, though I’m not sure what underwrites that confidence, exactly, since in general I’m not sophisticated enough in the realm of music/literature/etc. to delineate the distinction myself.

May 27, 2014 at 11:23 am

Professors at universities now have software to run student papers through to see if there is plagiarism. But the PEL guys were trying to identify via Schopenhauer authentic creative thought from inauthentic, rote unoriginal thinking and living, so I was more addressing the general nature of the creative.

May 26, 2014 at 11:47 am

Quotes regarding Scopenhauer on the nature of genius and creativity as covered on the podcast:

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.” –Socrates

But then Plato said: “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”

“As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.” –Schopenhauer

Ultimately: “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.” –Schopenhauer. So I guess we don’t really have to debate if we are geniuses (truly creative) since either we ourselves will not see–nor will others, unless . . .

May 26, 2014 at 4:04 pm

I have always found Schopenhauer one of the best modern philosophers (top 7 definitely). His sincerity shines clearly through for me…this sincerity of “cutting the bullshit and focusing on the real true core”. I respect that tremendously. His writings explored in this podcast reflect that clearly. Most of the criticisms people make against Schopy (my nickname for him) is of his character (and seldom actually amount to substantial philosophical argumentative criticisms), being perhaps overly arrogant or ‘extreme’ in some instances (or pessimistic/negative for example). Nietzsche had public respect for only two philosophers: Aristotle and Schopy (I personally believe Nietzsche to greatly love Socrates as well, but also hate part of him, especially the part of him that came to the fore at the end of his trial); to Nietzsche all the rest were just talking bullshit and not getting at what really matters in philosophy; I can see why Nietzsche thought this (even if I don’t completely agree with it of course); in short: Nietzsche was not wrong in realizing Schopy’s brilliance.

Schopy is a very complex and intricate character with some truly profound insights. I pretty much agree with most of what Schopy says regarding genius. I do however agree that Scohpy goes overboard sometimes with the extremities. Schopy, despite him trying to convince people otherwise, was a romantic when it comes to philosophy and in this case genius…he fails to acknowledge certain obvious empirical realities; for example the ideal of tabula rasa for the genius, the rejection of intellectual influence; I share his romanticism…but I am honest about it being and ideal, not a reality. Intellectual achievement is never solely a function of isolation; it is a co-dependency between the interaction with the world and others/their ideas and ‘retreating inward’ and synthesizing this in yourself.

I don’t want to type treatises here, I can just say that Schopy for me is 85% right (for example in his analysis of genius), the other 15% is actually just him not willing to sacrifice his romanticism (which translates into extreme views, for example when Mark notes how for Schopy it is “black/white, not shades of grey”). Schopy’s critical thinking, his utter sincere attempt to “get at the core philosophical problems” and express these in ‘clear simple terms’ is beautiful to me and places him in the greats of philosophy.

You guys did a wonderful podcast on this text and raised many very pertinent and thought provoking points. Thank you for the podcast, it was a great one. I am really looking forward to the podcast on Godel, should be very fascinating and I look forward to your discussions on his incompleteness theorems, character, logic/formal language works, etc.

May 27, 2014 at 12:56 pm

I really enjoyed this podcast for its freer, more personal tone. But it’s always fruitful to return to the text. For more on card catalogs (can there ever be enough?), check out Nicholson Baker’s excellent essay, “Discards”. Thanks for the inspiring discussion!

May 29, 2014 at 9:14 am

Yes, it went to a cheap place first and then a very expensive place. Scoring had actually burned off the surface of the disk.

The new discussion will for sure be better than the one we lost!

June 1, 2014 at 11:01 pm

I really enjoyed this podcast. It’s provocative and has practical underpinnings– very useful for any aspiring writer or intellectual. Mark, Wes and Dylan for such a lively discussion.

June 9, 2014 at 8:11 am

While I both enjoyed and, as always, learned a great deal from yet another wonderful podcast, I can’t help but fear your once again choosing the short essays serves to push further and further into an ever-receding distance the likelihood of ever hearing World As Will and Representation given “The PEL Treatment” (yes, that’s a thing now) . I remember getting the idea that one of your merry band (sorry, but I’ve been meaning to refer to you guys that way for ages) floated the idea that because the already-discussed “Fourfold Root” is presumed to form the basis of his subsequent thought, that there may be no real reason ever to tackle the work which all-but-literally gave birth to Nietzsche, intellectually speaking. To take Nietzsche seriously, as I know you all do, is, I believe, to understand the one genuinely important work of his most important influence.

[…] I am a music history professor at Mercer University and became very excited when the discussion on episode 94 focused on music and, in particular, two major issues: 1) music and noise; 2) music and the cult of […]

[…] to the interview or read more about Schopenhauer’s essays (including reading the essays themselves!) at The […]

[…] Schopenhauer on Reading, Writing, and Thinking […]

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• Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms Summary

by Arthur Schopenhauer

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by people who wish to remain anonymous

Arthur Schopenhauer's essays and maxims have surpassed the test of time because they are still relevant in the contemporary world. Schopenhauer had a tremendous life experience, and his essays analyzed human existence and its purpose. For instance, the reader realizes that Schopenhauer had firsthand experience with life. Schopenhauer's diligence on philosophical matters played a critical role in enabling him to develop life principles that govern human existence.

Schopenhauer discusses the significance of unity and its power. He illustrates his point using a big diamond and a concrete army. For instance, if a massive diamond is split into small pieces, it loses value. Similarly, if an army is scattered, it loses its power and can easily be defeated. Schopenhauer urges teachers to teach children the significance of unity in human life. The children should be taught the reality of life gradually to strengthen their minds and the ability to be critical thinkers.

‘On Reading and Books’

Schopenhauer argues that reading other people's books degrades a human's ability to be a critical thinker and make own judgment. According to Schopenhauer, when a person reads, he repeats the mental process of the author. Similarly, when a child learns to write, he exactly does what the teacher instructs him to do, but not by his own doing. Consequently, a person who spends the whole day reading loses the aptitude to think as an individual but thinks from the perspective of the different authors.

‘The Emptiness of the Existence’

Schopenhauer compares human life to a picture in a rough mosaic that must be looked at from a distance to ascertain its beauty. The author focuses on the vanities of life and the efforts human beings apply to achieve nonexistent material possessions. The paradox of life is that a man looks back and notices lost opportunities that he cannot recapture to improve his present. Therefore, Schopenhauer asks, 'What is the purpose of expectations in human life?' Consequently, the author reminds readers to optimize opportunities in their lives to avoid regretting in the future.

On Women, Thinking for Oneself, Religion and Metaphysics of love.'

On women, Schopenhauer argues that women pay the debt of life by incurring the pain of childbearing. In thinking for oneself, the human mind's value depends on personal development and individual judgment. On religion, Schopenhauer argues that people's way of worship must be respected, no matter how they conduct themselves. On the metaphysics of love, Schopenhauer expounds that not anything inventively stunning can survive without genuineness.

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Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms Questions and Answers

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Study Guide for Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms

Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms study guide contains a biography of Arthur Schopenhauer, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms.

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Farnam Street

Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out

A Meditation on Reading

One of the most timeless and beautiful meditations on reading comes from the 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer  (1788–1860).

For me, reading has always been about our tagline: Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out .

In The Prince , Machiavelli offered the following advice:  

“A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it.”

Seneca, writing on the same subject, said, “Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides.” In fact, most books are just new ways of seeing old ideas. So it makes sense to start with the people that came before us.

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. Arthur Schopenhauer

No matter what problem we face, odds are someone has faced it before and thoughtfully written about it. 

Reading to Acquire Wisdom

What does it mean to read? Is reading the path to acquiring wisdom? If not, why?

These are the questions that Schopenhauer attempts to address.

Mortimer Adler believed that reading is a conversation between you and the author . On this, Schopenhauer comments:

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher. Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal — that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such, however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralyzing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one’s own thoughts. Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like. From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on paper are nothing more than footprints in the sand: one sees the road the man has taken, but in order to know what he saw on the way, one requires his eyes.

Reflection is the grunt work of thinking . It’s how we acquire wisdom. If we read and don’t reflect, we only have the illusion of knowledge. Making the knowledge or own means digesting, synthesizing, and organizing the information.

This is how we acquire knowledge. The knowledge that allows us to pull forth relevance when reading and bring it to consciousness. Without this foundational knowledge, we are unable to separate the signal from the noise.

No literary quality can be attained by reading writers who possess it: be it, for example, persuasiveness, imagination, the gift of drawing comparisons, boldness or bitterness, brevity or grace, facility of expression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic manner, naïveté, and the like. But if we are already gifted with these qualities — that is to say, if we possess them potentia — we can call them forth and bring them to consciousness; we can discern to what uses they are to be put; we can be strengthened in our inclination, nay, may have courage, to use them; we can judge by examples the effect of their application and so learn the correct use of them; and it is only after we have accomplished all this that we actu possess these qualities.

Reading consumes time. And if we equate time with money, it should not be wasted on bad books. In an argument that pulls to mind two filters for what to read , Schopenhauer writes:

It is the same in literature as in life. Wherever one goes one immediately comes upon the incorrigible mob of humanity. It exists everywhere in legions; crowding, soiling everything, like flies in summer. Hence the numberless bad books, those rank weeds of literature which extract nourishment from the corn and choke it. They monopolise the time, money, and attention which really belong to good books and their noble aims; they are written merely with a view to making money or procuring places. They are not only useless, but they do positive harm. Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature aims solely at taking a few shillings out of the public’s pocket, and to accomplish this, author, publisher, and reviewer have joined forces. There is a more cunning and worse trick, albeit a profitable one. Littérateurs , hack-writers, and productive authors have succeeded, contrary to good taste and the true culture of the age, in bringing the world elegante into leading-strings, so that they have been taught to read a tempo and all the same thing — namely, the newest books order that they may have material for conversation in their social circles. … But what can be more miserable than the fate of a reading public of this kind, that feels always impelled to read the latest writings of extremely commonplace authors who write for money only, and therefore exist in numbers? And for the sake of this they merely know by name the works of the rare and superior writers, of all ages and countries.

Knowing what to read is important, but so is its inversion — knowing what not to read.

This consists in not taking a book into one’s hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time — such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct. One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.

In Norwegian Wood , Haruki Murakami makes the argument that “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” On this, Schopenhauer said:

Oh, how like one commonplace mind is to another! How they are all fashioned in one form! How they all think alike under similar circumstances, and never differ! This is why their views are so personal and petty.

On the two types of literature, Schopenhauer comments:

There are at all times two literatures which, although scarcely known to each other, progress side by side — the one real, the other merely apparent. The former grows into literature that lasts. Pursued by people who live for science or poetry, it goes its way earnestly and quietly, but extremely slowly; and it produces in Europe scarcely a dozen works in a century, which, however, are permanent. The other literature is pursued by people who live on science or poetry; it goes at a gallop amid a great noise and shouting of those taking part, and brings yearly many thousand works into the market. But after a few years one asks, Where are they? where is their fame, which was so great formerly? This class of literature may be distinguished as fleeting, the other as permanent.

Commenting on why we learn little from what we read, he writes:

It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents. To desire that a man should retain everything he has ever read, is the same as wishing him to retain in his stomach all that he has ever eaten. He has been bodily nourished on what he has eaten, and mentally on what he has read, and through them become what he is. As the body assimilates what is homogeneous to it, so will a man retain what interests him; in other words, what coincides with his system of thought or suits his ends. Every one has aims, but very few have anything approaching a system of thought. This is why such people do not take an objective interest in anything, and why they learn nothing from what they read: they remember nothing about it.

But reading good works is not enough. We must re-read important works immediately because it aids our understanding, a concept that Mortimer Adler echoes .

Any kind of important book should immediately be read twice, partly because one grasps the matter in its entirety the second time, and only really understands the beginning when the end is known; and partly because in reading it the second time one’s temper and mood are different, so that one gets another impression; it may be that one sees the matter in another light.

And the final part of the essay I want to draw your attention to speaks to how advancement happens in a flurry of false starts, and answers the age-old question of why so many luminaries — whether scientific or even artistic — fail to be recognized in their present age as they will later come to be seen by the world.

… imagine the progress of knowledge among mankind in the form of a planet’s course. The false paths the human race soon follows after any important progress has been made represent the epicycles in the Ptolemaic system; after passing through any one of them the planet is just where it was before it entered it. The great minds, however, which really bring the race further on its course, do not accompany it on the epicycles which it makes every time. This explains why posthumous fame is got at the expense of contemporary fame, and vice versâ .

If you think Schopenhauer is for you, pick up a copy of The Essential Schopenhauer: Key Selections from The World As Will and Representation and Other Writings .

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Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy

A Reading Recommendation: Schopenhauer's The Wisdom Of Life

A short and interesting essay on human happiness.

Over the last few months, I have been rereading a short, clever, and interesting work by Arthur Schopenhauer, a fairly systematic essay titled “The Wisdom of Life”. A tutorial client of mine, who for a variety of reasons I particularly enjoy meeting with, asked me if we could work our way through the text together.

Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The essay was originally published as one of the chapters in volume 1 of Schopenhauer’s late work Parerga and Paralipomena . I first read that work back in college, and more recently about a decade back when as a visiting scholar at the European Graduate School, I had the opportunity to take a course on Schopenhauer with Wolfgang Schirmacher. Reading just this particular essay again in the present, to discuss it with my client, a number of features of the work stood out to me more.

If you have some background knowledge about Arthur Schopenhauer, or you’ve spent time with his other works, particularly his The World As Will And Representation , you will likely - and correctly - associate Schopenhauer with a thoroughgoing and systematically worked through philosophical pessimism . So you might be surprised at my suggesting “The Wisdom Of Life” to you. After all, I’m much more about virtue ethics, philosophy as a way of life, and the pursuit of human happiness, aren’t I?

Well, this particular essay starts out in a very interesting manner:

In these pages I shall speak of “The Wisdom of Life” in the common meaning of the term, as the art, namely, of ordering our lives so as to obtain the greatest possible amount of pleasure and success; an art the theory of which may be called “Eudaemonology”, for it teaches us how to lead a happy existence. . . . Now whether human life corresponds, or could possibly correspond, to this conception of existence, is a question to which, as is well-known, my philosophical system returns a negative answer. . . . Accordingly, in elaborating the scheme of a happy existence, I have had to make a complete surrender of the higher metaphysical and ethical standpoint to which my own theories lead; and everything I shall say here will to some extent rest upon a compromise; in so far, that is, as I take the common standpoint of everyday, and embrace the error which is at the bottom of it.

Schopenhauer doesn’t think that what he is calling an eudaemonology , or doctrine of happiness, is genuinely possible. And yet , he is willing to set out what, if it were possible, it would have to teach us. He does a pretty thorough job in seeing this project through. So that’s one interesting feature of the work: the author doesn’t believe in the project, but he strives to do a great job in working in out!

A second interesting feature to me - and doubtless to you, if you share some of my philosophical interests and values - is that Schopenhauer is effectively engaging in that broad approach we nowadays call “philosophy as a way of life”. He is setting out considerations, observations, arguments about how we can apply our rational minds and our capacity of will to improve our own lives particularly by making better-informed and thoughtful decisions, prioritizations, and commitments.

When you read through the text, you will see him engaging with many other thinkers who have approached these problems and questions. Quite a few of them are philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Clement of Alexandria, just to name a few of the ancients. He ranges widely in the sources of wisdom he draws upon and incorporates into the work. Like other great authors before him he both makes his own attempt at making some new contribution beyond what previous thinkers offered, but also at incorporating what useful ideas and advice they provided.

A third particularly interesting feature to me is the lines along which Schopenhauer organizes the work. He starts out by invoking a distinction between three kinds of goods that is a commonplaces of ancient ethical philosophy: goods of the soul, goods of the body, and external goods. Schopenhauer adopts a different breakdown:

Keeping nothing of this division but the number, I observe that the fundamental differences in human lot may be reduced to three distinct classes: (1) What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education. (2) What a man has: that is, property and possessions of every kind. (3) How a man stands in the estimation of others: by which is to be understood, as everybody knows, what a man is in the eyes of his fellowmen, or, more strictly, the light in which they regard him. This is shown by their opinion of him; and their opinion is in its turn manifested by the honor in which he is held, and by his rank and reputation.

You notice that he effectively rolls together goods of the soul (or mind) and the body. And indeed, one fourth interesting feature of this work is the importance Schopenhauer places upon physical health as integral to human happiness. He also breaks down external goods into two main domains, that of property and possessions, and, you might say, all the other stuff, which will effectively encompass our social status, and what we think or assume others think of us.

Why does he separate wealth from honor and reputation, since they are both goods external to our minds and bodies? Schopenhauer argues that while the personality is where the real importance resides for a happy life, we do need to give some attention and space to wealth, in ways that we don’t need to for honor and reputation.

You’ll find the work, interestingly, divided into three main discussions along the lines of these divisions, but the third, and significantly longer division is further subdivided into five parts: Reputation, Pride, Rank, Honor, Fame

Schopenhauer, in my view, is a great stylist, and both enjoyable to read and provocative of thought on the matters he grapples with. That is true for his works in the original German, but I would say that this is also the case for the English translation by Saunders. Some of the examples, of course, may be a bit less relatable for a contemporary audience, and occasionally Schopenhauer’s consistent misogyny will break through, but I expect that most readers will find his thoughts on the matters discussed well-articulated and worth mulling over.

I’ll say this - which gives you a glimpse into some of the temptations I struggle with - rereading and discussing this work with my client produced a desire on my part to take this little text and produce an entire set of core concept videos delving into each of the main ideas and arguments. Since I allowed myself a similar indulgence last month with two works by Plutarch, which delayed producing core concept videos promised on other texts and authors, I’m holding myself back from that reluctantly for now!

But there’s no reason for you to deprive yourself of the opportunity to enjoy and perhaps benefit from Schopenhauer’s witty and systematic reflections on what a genuinely happy life would require, as well as traps, misconceptions, and errors we need to avoid. Because the original text and the English translation have long been in the public domain, you can easily access it in multiple places and formats online. I’ll just mention two of them for the time being (since as I write this, some of the other sites I’d normally link to appear down:

Wikisource: The Wisdom Of Life

Project Gutenberg: The Wisdom Of Life

If you have previously read The Wisdom Of Life, or if you come back to this recommendation post after having read it, feel free to leave a comment with your own take on the essay!

Ready for more?

In Search of a Nonexistent Cure

In his new book, Cody Delistraty chronicles his almost decade-long journey to heal his grief—only to discover that there is no remedy.

On a short flight a few weeks ago, I overheard two flight attendants seated in the back galley of the plane idly chat about death. There were just a few minutes left in the flight, and the pilots had already begun pitching us toward the ground. From my seat in the very back row, I heard one flight attendant, a young woman, say to her colleague, “I think I would prefer to be cremated. It just feels weird to me to have my body rotting in the ground.” Her colleague responded by sharing that in Hong Kong, where he was from, cremation was the norm. Their exchange petered out as we descended, all talk of death abandoned as soon as the wheels hit the ground.

It was striking to witness the banality of their discussion, to observe the casualness with which two colleagues contemplated the end of life, all while hurtling, at 300 miles an hour, down to earth. But aside from the unexpected setting, there was little of note about their exchange. After all, many conversations about death take place in a similarly arbitrary manner: Questions about end-of-life plans come up, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere; then, inevitably, we move on.

In the United States, our vernacular of death, dying, and grieving leaves much to be desired: Books and advice meant to help people mourn too often offer up only clichéd solutions and shallow platitudes. Grief is treated as something that can be processed and managed; concepts such as “efficient grieving” are designed to coax bereaved individuals back toward maximum productivity. After the writer Cody Delistraty lost his mother to cancer, he found himself taking the “path of least resistance” in conversations, partaking in what he calls the “bullshit dance we all do” to deflect and minimize the weight of our losses. He found himself responding to people who said Oh, I’m very sorry to him with “kinder and kinder letdowns to the point of replying No worries !”

In The Grief Cure , his debut work of nonfiction, Delistraty makes an admirable attempt to write his way out of that “bullshit dance,” to directly confront the contours of his own grief. Yet his writing ends up mired in the same unsatisfying truisms about the universality and incommunicability of death that ostensibly propelled his project in the first place. “Every generation, every person, really, must relearn the truths of grief for themselves,” he writes. “There is no other way to grieve than to grieve.” The book chronicles his almost decade-long journey to come to terms with his mother’s death and his “search for possible cures to my grief,” only to discover that no such remedies have been found, nor will they ever be. To be a person is to inhabit a permanent condition of mourning for everyone and everything that has been irrevocably lost, and to try to live on—and live well—all the same.

Read: What to read to come to terms with death

The search takes him far and wide. After a compulsive exercise regime fails to do the trick, he tries something called “laughter therapy,” where you force yourself to laugh until you might just cry. He uses audio recordings of his mother to program AI bots that can imitate her personality; he takes mushrooms to see if they could kick him out of his grief and release him from his newfound identity as “a person whose fundamental personality is rooted in loss.” He tries “bibliotherapy,” in which a therapist prescribes him a reading list intended to help him process his loss. Here, Delistraty pauses to tritely acknowledge that “the most intense kind of grief can feel unprecedented because, when it happens to us, within our own perception, it really is unprecedented … But countless works of history, literature, and philosophy have reckoned with grief.”

He goes on a silent retreat to the Esalen Institute, in Big Sur, California, for Zen meditation classes; he looks into life-extension technology and wonders whether it might one day be possible to stave off the inevitable. He speaks to a neuroscientist working toward a way of deleting memories; he goes to Mexico for the Day of the Dead, takes a cocktail-mixing class, and then wanders around a cemetery looking for closure. He pays $3,295 to attend a “breakup bootcamp” to see if it is possible to break up with his grief the same way one breaks up with a destructive ex.

In sum, Delistraty wears himself—and his reader—out by frenetically searching for “cures” for his grief, cures that, somewhere along the way, he realizes will never come. He seems lost, and his lostness, more than anything else, identifies him as a bereaved person. In the end, rather than finding a remedy for his incurable condition, he seems intent on drawing it out. “By searching for solutions, I got to keep my grief close,” he admits.

The impulse to reject the terrible finality of a loved one’s death by assigning oneself a series of tasks to complete, therapies to try, or mementos to sort through is a classic and thoroughly human response. In his slim and searing collection of essays on mortality, Imagining the End , the philosopher Jonathan Lear writes that we “come to life when a loved one dies”; that “we get busy emotionally, imaginatively, and cognitively” as we try to keep the memory of the lost person (or pet) alive. It is a response that Freud, in “Mourning and Melancholia,” described as a “revolt in [people’s] minds against mourning,” the refusal to accept the awful fact that everyone will eventually die.

Read: The defining emotion of modern life

Delistraty seems to reject the idea that his mother’s death has made him a lifetime member of the world’s population of mourners. He is more interested in grief as an object, a thing that can be dealt with, investigated, analyzed, and held in one’s hand, than he is in the indeterminate, ambivalent, and far more interesting process of grieving. He is so busy giving himself tasks to complete and “grief cures” to try that he at times seems to sidestep the true nature of his experience, treading lightly wherever he considers the profound emotional toll of his loss. He is hardly the first writer to fall into this trap, to discover that you cannot report your way past grief, that treating your own pain as an assignment to be completed and triumphantly handed in to one’s editor will do nothing to assuage the sense of abiding loss. (I know because I, too, have tried.)

Reading The Grief Cure brought to mind advice that Mary Gaitskill once offered to her students: that, when writing about the hardest things in life, “they should not be surprised if they failed the first or second or third time.” Although Delistraty name-checks a handful of authors and philosophers who have managed to write about loss and death well—Proust, Schopenhauer, Didion, and Berger all merit mentions—he does not meaningfully reflect on what makes their works serve as enduring guides to grief, nor model the artfulness of their prose.

“Grief is the stuff of life. A life without grief is no life at all,” Cormac McCarthy wrote in one of his last novels. We are born bereft, birthed into a cascade of past and future losses. The process of acquiring language is also, in part, the process of learning how to describe this condition: Children hungrily expand their vocabularies only to turn into adults (and in some cases writers) who realize that they still haven’t found the right words. We are, as Delistraty puts it, “inundated” with loss, swimming in news of death and dying, all members of the same macabre club. “Mourning reveals itself as a basic mode of human being,” Jonathan Lear advises. “When we mourn well, it is a peculiarly human way of flourishing.” Figuring out how to “mourn well” is the task of life, an assignment that by its very nature cannot be completed.

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Weeks After Alice Munro’s Death, Daughter Tells of Dark Family Secret

Andrea Skinner said in The Toronto Star that her stepfather sexually abused her at age 9, and that her mother stayed with him after she learned of it.

By Elizabeth A. Harris

Andrea Robin Skinner, a daughter of the Canadian Nobel laureate Alice Munro, said her stepfather sexually abused her as a child — and that her mother knew about it, and chose to stay with him anyway.

Skinner, who is now an adult, detailed these accusations in an essay in The Toronto Star on Sunday. According to a separate article in The Toronto Star, Skinner went to the Ontario police, and in 2005, her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, was charged with indecent assault against her. He pleaded guilty.

By then, he was 80 years old. He got a suspended sentence and probation for two years. Munro stayed with him until he died in 2013.

Because of her mother’s fame, Skinner wrote, “the silence continued.” Munro died on May 13 at 92.

“What I wanted was some record of the truth, some public proof that I hadn’t deserved what had happened to me,” Skinner wrote of going to the police in 2005, about 30 years after the abuse began.

“I also wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother,” Skinner continued. “I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.”

Attempts to reach Skinner on Sunday were unsuccessful.

Skinner wrote that the abuse began in 1976, when she was 9 years old and went to visit Fremlin, then in his 50s, and her mother, who was in her 40s. She said he climbed into the bed where she was sleeping and sexually assaulted her. Skinner said she told her stepmother, who then told Skinner’s father. Her father did not confront Munro.

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