On Reading Promiscuously
I’m sitting on the train between Talkeetna and Fairbanks, Alaska, having just finished a book in a day, which I haven’t done in a long time. It helps that this train ride is eight hours long and the book, Life at the Talkeetna Roadhouse, was only 100 pages with plenty of photos. I picked up this little volume at the Talkeetna Historical Society Museum, housed in an aging red schoolhouse on a dirt road.
It’s not a particularly good book. It’s not well written and many of the stories are a bit pointless, but I love how its cadence gives you a sense of the pace of life in this tiny town, which was the inspiration for the show “Northern Exposure.” Author Ron Garrett wrote it like he might say it, and his voice—sweet, well-meaning, occasionally clueless—is kind of refreshing.
It reminds me that it’s important, as a creative type, to fuel up on the widest array of art and writing that you can. You can get a weird perspective of the world when all you read is pre-approved prose. I have a bad habit of being a snob about my reading material. I don’t like to waste my time, so I tend to read things that I have seen in reviews or that sport fancy awards on their covers. But that’s a lousy way of reading, because it’s exploring the world by way of shoulds rather than curiosity.
This summer, I was browsing in a bookstore in Gloucester, Massachusetts when I came across Dead Wake, by Erik Larsen. In the beginning pages, Larsen talks about the process by which he re-discovered the story of the Lusitania, the subject of the book. Part of it, he says, is that between projects he tends to “read promiscuously.” I love that. I love the idea of having no allegiances, of reading like a proud hussy. Just pick up whatever it is. See what it’s about.
When I look back, some of my favorite, most delicious reads have been these random, often unconventional books that have probably never even been a blip on the radar screen of the literati. They have this almost forbidden allure in their utter inconsequence. In May, I picked up a book about wabi-sabi in the stack of used volumes at a random barn selling pies on the California coast. In a bookstore in Yosemite Valley, I picked up a skinny paperback, Art & Fear, that has some interesting wisdom in its digressive contemplation of the obstacles to art-making.
Maybe some self-help author or fancy researcher will one day come up with an official reason why reading promiscuously is good for your creativity. But in the meantime, I’m happy to do it just for the sheer pleasure.