The "somebody else thinks like me" feeling is probably, mostly, a feature of psychological adolescence; by which I mean that transitional mental phase between childhood and adulthood: it is a feeling I associate with reading particular books, more than anything else.
(Although I did sometimes get the same feeling, albeit very rarely, when meeting a new person.)
A particularly memorable and clear example was Colin Wilson's The Outsider, which I encountered age 19; at a point when my mind had for several months been increasingly occupied by exactly the matters that were the focus of that book - especially the problem of the triviality, dullness, and alienation of mundane everyday life...
How there are experiences in which this alienation may apparently be overcome - but that these "moments" of fulfilment are always (it seems) brief and temporary, and incomplete.
Wilson's book was a thorough and multi-faceted explanation and analysis of the problem; such that I realized "it's not just me" who experienced modern life in this way.
My initial hope was, naturally enough, that Wilson's writings might be, or might point-to, The Answer; but of course that was not the case.
(I say "of course" because I now believe that there is no full and permanent "answer" to this problem in this mortal earthly life; because this life is a transitional and learning phase of an eternal soul, so this life is itself a kind of adolescence. Therefore a full answer that is the resolution of the problem is only possible by moving on to spiritual maturity, which lies beyond death.)
Nonetheless, it was a considerable encouragement to realize that I was one of many people who knew and grappled-with this problem - and who regarded it as a very significant problem. Since there was nobody in My Real Life who talked about such matters, or who seemed to take them with the seriousness that I did - The Outsider book - and those that followed along the same line (both by Wilson and recommended by him) - meant a great deal to me.
4 comments:
I've never read the book, but I might yet.
I wonder would it still be possible for an academically unqualified person, without any particular reputation in any other field, to have a book of literary criticism published? Ot was it highly unusual even then? I'm assuming it's essentially literary criticism.
I have an ongoing fantasy of having an academic article published even though I'm not an academic. Or just of writing one and sending it in for the sake of it.
@M - It was unusual to have such a book published and for it to make such a splash as did the Outsider - perhaps because it was the first British work of Existentialism - which, at that time, had been a French phenomenon so far as most people knew. The Outsider is more philosophy, done by reflecting on other people's works, than literary criticism as such.
There are so many thousands of academic journals, that I don't doubt you could get a paper published if you wrote in the professional style and form. Having someone actually *read* a published paper is much less likely!
Most papers have no apparent impact at all, no feedback, no nothing - e.g. I published more than 300 items listed on Google Scholar (not all "papers") - and quite of lot were pretty frequently cited; but there are nonetheless *dozens* with zero citations.
So it's best to do it to please yourself! I would choose a journal run and read by enthusiastic amateurs, as well as professionals - such as the Chesterton Review. They are more likely to read, enjoy, maybe get in touch.
Yes, I've come across this statistic a lot, though I'm not sure how accurate it really is:
https://fee.org/articles/academics-write-rubbish-nobody-reads/
I've written to writers of academic articles to thank them for an article I liked or to take issue with something they've said. Sometimes I get a nice reponse, sometimes I get a snooty response, sometimes no response.
@M - Well, stats aside, I'm satisfied that it seems likely to be true from my own experience.
(By "experience" I mean the stats fit with what I gathered from being an academic and journal editor.)
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