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The vast majority of the world’s books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It’s just numbers.
Consider books alone. Let’s say you read two a week, and sometimes you take on a long one that takes you a whole week. That’s quite a
1)brisk pace for the average person. That lets you finish, let’s say, 100 books a year. If we assume you start now, and you’re 15, and you are willing to continue at this pace until you’re 80. That’s 6,500 books, which really sounds like a lot.
Let’s do you another favor: Let’s further assume you limit yourself to books from the last, say, 250 years. This cuts out giant, enormous
2)swaths of literature, of course, but we’ll assume you’re willing to 3)write off thousands of years of writing in an effort to be reasonably well-read.
Of course, by the time you’re 80, there will be 65 more years of new books, so by then, you’re dealing with 315 years of books, which allows you to read about 20 books from each year. You’ll have to break down your 20 books each year between fiction and nonfiction—you have to cover history, philosophy, essays, diaries, science, religion, science fiction, 4)westerns, political theory… I hope you weren’t planning to go out very much.
You can hit the highlights, and you can specialize enough to become knowledgeable in some things, but most of what’s out there, you’ll have to ignore. (Don’t forget books not written in English! Don’t forget to learn all the other languages!)
We could do the same calculus with film or music or, increasingly, television—you simply have no chance of seeing even most of what exists. Statistically speaking, you will die having missed almost everything.
Roger Ebert recently wrote a lovely piece about the idea of being “well-read,” and specifically about the way writers aren’t read as much once they’ve been dead a long time. He worries—well, not worries, but 5)laments a little—that he senses people don’t read 6)Henry James anymore, that they don’t read 7)Sinclair Lewis, that their knowledge of 8)Allen Ginsberg is limited to Howl.
It’s undoubtedly true; there are things that fade. But I can’t help blaming, in part, the fact that we also simply have access to more and more things to choose from more and more easily. 9)Netflix, Amazon, iTunes—you wouldn’t have to go and search dusty used bookstores or know the guy who works at a record store in order to hear most of that stuff you’re missing. You’d only have to choose to hear it.
You used to have a limited number of reasonably practical choices presented to you, based on what bookstores carried, what your local newspaper reviewed, or what you heard on the radio, or what was taught in college by a particular English department. There was a huge amount of selection that took place above the consumer level.
Now, everything gets 10)dropped into our laps, and there are really only two responses if you want to feel like you’re well-read, or 11)well-versed in music, or whatever the case may be: 12)culling and surrender.
Culling is the choosing you do for yourself. It’s the sorting of what’s worth your time and what’s not worth your time. Surrender, on the other hand, is the realization that you do not have time for everything that would be worth the time you invested in it if you had the time, and that this fact doesn’t have to threaten your sense that you are well-read.
It is the recognition that well-read is not a destination; there is nowhere to get to, and if you assume there is somewhere to get to, you’d have to live a thousand years to even think about getting there, and by the time you got there, there would be a thousand years to catch up on.
The same goes for 13)throwing out foreign films, documentaries, classical music, fantasy novels,
14)soap operas, humor, or westerns. I see people culling by category, broadly and aggressively: television is not important, popular fiction is not important, blockbuster movies are not important.
Culling is easy; it implies a huge amount of control and mastery. Surrender, on the other hand, is a little sad. That’s the moment you realize you’re separated from so much. That’s your moment of understanding that you’ll miss most of the music and the dancing and the art and the books and the films that there have ever been and ever will be, and right now, there’s something being performed somewhere in the world that you’re not seeing that you would love.
It’s sad, but it’s also…great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you’re “supposed to see.” Imagine you got through everybody’s list, until everything you hadn’t read didn’t really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since 15)a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can 16)gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.
If “well-read” means “not missing anything,” then nobody has a chance. If “well-read” means “making a genuine effort to explore thoughtfully,” then yes, we can all be well-read. But what we’ve seen is always going to be a very small cup dipped out of a very big ocean, and turning your back on the ocean to stare into the cup can’t change that.
这个世界有着海量的书籍、音乐、电影、电视节目和艺术，而大多数是你永远都不可能看到的。它们于你而言只是一些数字而已。
仅仅以书籍为例。假设你每星期阅读两本书，有时书比较厚，你要花上一整个星期才能读完。这对于普通人来说已经是一个很快的阅读速度。这样下来，你一年能读完100本书。如果你今年15岁，从现在就开始阅读，并且愿意保持这个阅读速度直到80岁，到那时你将读完6500本书，这听起来确实很多。
让我们再帮你算算：进一步假设你限制自己只看过去250年来的书籍。这将砍掉数量庞大的文学作品，当然，我们仍会假设你愿意为了努力成为博学之才而无视几千年来的著作。
当然了，等到你80岁时，还将加上65年来的新书，因此到那个时候，你面对的将是315年来的书籍，让你从里面每年选20本书，并且需要将每一年的20本书分为小说和非小说——你得包揽历史、哲学、散文、记事录、科学、宗教、科幻小说、美国西部小说、政治理论……我希望你不打算经常外出。
你可以只关注重点，可以因为术业有专攻而拥有某方面的渊博知识，但是你不得不忽略掉世界上的绝大多数东西。（别忘了还有非英语书籍！别忘了学习所有其他语言！）
我们也可以用相同的方法对电影、音乐，或者越来越多的电视节目进行计算——你压根儿没有机会看完绝大多数存在的东西。从数据上来说，你离世的时候几乎会错过所有东西。
罗杰·艾伯特近期写了一篇关于“饱览群书”这一观点的有趣文章，具体谈到了如今越来越少人拜读那些离世多年的作家的作品。他心存忧虑—噢，也许不是担忧，只是有点惋惜—他发觉人们不再看亨利·詹姆斯的作品，也不再看辛克
莱·刘易斯的小说，而他们对艾伦·金斯堡的了解也仅限于《嚎叫》而已。
毫无疑问，这一切都是真的；总有一些东西会悄然淡去。然而，我不禁对这样的事实产生几分抱怨：可供我们选择的东西越来越多，获取的途径也越发容易。有了Netflix、亚马逊、iTunes等网站——你不必到满布灰尘的二手书店去寻寻觅觅，也不需要有相熟的唱片店员工才能听到大多数你错过的唱片。你只需选择是否点击进去听。
过去，摆在你面前的是合理可行的有限选择——可能是根据书店的进货、地方报纸的评论或者广播上听来的推荐，也可能是某学院一个特定的英语系所教授的内容。在消费者层面之外，还有一批巨量的精选接踵而至。
如今，你能轻而易举地得到任何东西，如果你想一尝“饱览群书”的滋味——或是对音乐等其他任何方面了如指掌，摆在你面前的也就只有两个选择：精选与放弃。
精选即是为自己进行挑选，将值得与不值得你花费时间的东西分门别类。另一方面，放弃则是明白即使你有一定的时间，你也没有足够的时间投入到每一件值得一做的事情上，而这一事实也不会影响到你对自己博学多才的评价。
众所周知，饱览群书并不是一个目的地；你并不能达到某个境界，如果你设想饱览群书能将你带到某个境界，单是想想如何去到那儿，你就不得不活上一千年，而等到你终于到达了，你也还得补上那落下的一千年。
对于外国电影、纪录片、古典音乐、奇幻小说、肥皂剧、幽默剧或是西部影片的取舍问题，这种认知同样适用。我看到人们根据不同类别进行广泛而激进的甄选：电视剧不重要，通俗小说不重要，影视大片也不重要。
精选很简单；它意味着大量的操控和运筹帷幄。而放弃却显得有点悲哀，那一刻你意识到自己与如此多的东西失之交臂。那一刻你明白到自己将错过绝大多数动听音乐、曼妙舞姿、艺术创作、各种图书以及影视作品，它们曾经出现过，也将永远存在。而现在，说不定在世界的某个地方，某一个表演正在进行，你可能会爱上的，却没办法欣赏到。
这很悲哀，但同时也……棒极了。想象你已经欣赏过一些美好的东西，或是知道某些美好的事情。想象你真的听完了所有“必听”的唱片、看完了所有“必看”的书籍和电影。想象你完成了所有人的清单，直到每一样你没读过的东西都没有必要真正地通读一遍。那将意味着自从我们人类第一次拿起小提琴进行创作到现在，这个世界所创造出的各种文化价值都是如此渺小而微不足道，区区一个普通人只用一辈子的时间就能将其全都吞进肚子里。那会让我们全都成为失败者，我是这么认为的。
假如“饱览群书”意味着“不错过任何东西”，那么没有人能谈得上博学。假如“饱览群书”意味着“诚恳努力巨细无遗地探索”，那么，是的，我们都能成为博学之人。然而，我们所看到的东西，都只是汪洋大海里的一杯水，即便转身背对大海，紧紧地盯着手中的那一杯，也改变不了这个事实。
Consider books alone. Let’s say you read two a week, and sometimes you take on a long one that takes you a whole week. That’s quite a
1)brisk pace for the average person. That lets you finish, let’s say, 100 books a year. If we assume you start now, and you’re 15, and you are willing to continue at this pace until you’re 80. That’s 6,500 books, which really sounds like a lot.
Let’s do you another favor: Let’s further assume you limit yourself to books from the last, say, 250 years. This cuts out giant, enormous
2)swaths of literature, of course, but we’ll assume you’re willing to 3)write off thousands of years of writing in an effort to be reasonably well-read.
Of course, by the time you’re 80, there will be 65 more years of new books, so by then, you’re dealing with 315 years of books, which allows you to read about 20 books from each year. You’ll have to break down your 20 books each year between fiction and nonfiction—you have to cover history, philosophy, essays, diaries, science, religion, science fiction, 4)westerns, political theory… I hope you weren’t planning to go out very much.
You can hit the highlights, and you can specialize enough to become knowledgeable in some things, but most of what’s out there, you’ll have to ignore. (Don’t forget books not written in English! Don’t forget to learn all the other languages!)
We could do the same calculus with film or music or, increasingly, television—you simply have no chance of seeing even most of what exists. Statistically speaking, you will die having missed almost everything.
Roger Ebert recently wrote a lovely piece about the idea of being “well-read,” and specifically about the way writers aren’t read as much once they’ve been dead a long time. He worries—well, not worries, but 5)laments a little—that he senses people don’t read 6)Henry James anymore, that they don’t read 7)Sinclair Lewis, that their knowledge of 8)Allen Ginsberg is limited to Howl.
It’s undoubtedly true; there are things that fade. But I can’t help blaming, in part, the fact that we also simply have access to more and more things to choose from more and more easily. 9)Netflix, Amazon, iTunes—you wouldn’t have to go and search dusty used bookstores or know the guy who works at a record store in order to hear most of that stuff you’re missing. You’d only have to choose to hear it.
You used to have a limited number of reasonably practical choices presented to you, based on what bookstores carried, what your local newspaper reviewed, or what you heard on the radio, or what was taught in college by a particular English department. There was a huge amount of selection that took place above the consumer level.
Now, everything gets 10)dropped into our laps, and there are really only two responses if you want to feel like you’re well-read, or 11)well-versed in music, or whatever the case may be: 12)culling and surrender.
Culling is the choosing you do for yourself. It’s the sorting of what’s worth your time and what’s not worth your time. Surrender, on the other hand, is the realization that you do not have time for everything that would be worth the time you invested in it if you had the time, and that this fact doesn’t have to threaten your sense that you are well-read.
It is the recognition that well-read is not a destination; there is nowhere to get to, and if you assume there is somewhere to get to, you’d have to live a thousand years to even think about getting there, and by the time you got there, there would be a thousand years to catch up on.
The same goes for 13)throwing out foreign films, documentaries, classical music, fantasy novels,
14)soap operas, humor, or westerns. I see people culling by category, broadly and aggressively: television is not important, popular fiction is not important, blockbuster movies are not important.
Culling is easy; it implies a huge amount of control and mastery. Surrender, on the other hand, is a little sad. That’s the moment you realize you’re separated from so much. That’s your moment of understanding that you’ll miss most of the music and the dancing and the art and the books and the films that there have ever been and ever will be, and right now, there’s something being performed somewhere in the world that you’re not seeing that you would love.
It’s sad, but it’s also…great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you’re “supposed to see.” Imagine you got through everybody’s list, until everything you hadn’t read didn’t really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since 15)a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can 16)gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.
If “well-read” means “not missing anything,” then nobody has a chance. If “well-read” means “making a genuine effort to explore thoughtfully,” then yes, we can all be well-read. But what we’ve seen is always going to be a very small cup dipped out of a very big ocean, and turning your back on the ocean to stare into the cup can’t change that.
这个世界有着海量的书籍、音乐、电影、电视节目和艺术，而大多数是你永远都不可能看到的。它们于你而言只是一些数字而已。
仅仅以书籍为例。假设你每星期阅读两本书，有时书比较厚，你要花上一整个星期才能读完。这对于普通人来说已经是一个很快的阅读速度。这样下来，你一年能读完100本书。如果你今年15岁，从现在就开始阅读，并且愿意保持这个阅读速度直到80岁，到那时你将读完6500本书，这听起来确实很多。
让我们再帮你算算：进一步假设你限制自己只看过去250年来的书籍。这将砍掉数量庞大的文学作品，当然，我们仍会假设你愿意为了努力成为博学之才而无视几千年来的著作。
当然了，等到你80岁时，还将加上65年来的新书，因此到那个时候，你面对的将是315年来的书籍，让你从里面每年选20本书，并且需要将每一年的20本书分为小说和非小说——你得包揽历史、哲学、散文、记事录、科学、宗教、科幻小说、美国西部小说、政治理论……我希望你不打算经常外出。
你可以只关注重点，可以因为术业有专攻而拥有某方面的渊博知识，但是你不得不忽略掉世界上的绝大多数东西。（别忘了还有非英语书籍！别忘了学习所有其他语言！）
我们也可以用相同的方法对电影、音乐，或者越来越多的电视节目进行计算——你压根儿没有机会看完绝大多数存在的东西。从数据上来说，你离世的时候几乎会错过所有东西。
罗杰·艾伯特近期写了一篇关于“饱览群书”这一观点的有趣文章，具体谈到了如今越来越少人拜读那些离世多年的作家的作品。他心存忧虑—噢，也许不是担忧，只是有点惋惜—他发觉人们不再看亨利·詹姆斯的作品，也不再看辛克
莱·刘易斯的小说，而他们对艾伦·金斯堡的了解也仅限于《嚎叫》而已。
毫无疑问，这一切都是真的；总有一些东西会悄然淡去。然而，我不禁对这样的事实产生几分抱怨：可供我们选择的东西越来越多，获取的途径也越发容易。有了Netflix、亚马逊、iTunes等网站——你不必到满布灰尘的二手书店去寻寻觅觅，也不需要有相熟的唱片店员工才能听到大多数你错过的唱片。你只需选择是否点击进去听。
过去，摆在你面前的是合理可行的有限选择——可能是根据书店的进货、地方报纸的评论或者广播上听来的推荐，也可能是某学院一个特定的英语系所教授的内容。在消费者层面之外，还有一批巨量的精选接踵而至。
如今，你能轻而易举地得到任何东西，如果你想一尝“饱览群书”的滋味——或是对音乐等其他任何方面了如指掌，摆在你面前的也就只有两个选择：精选与放弃。
精选即是为自己进行挑选，将值得与不值得你花费时间的东西分门别类。另一方面，放弃则是明白即使你有一定的时间，你也没有足够的时间投入到每一件值得一做的事情上，而这一事实也不会影响到你对自己博学多才的评价。
众所周知，饱览群书并不是一个目的地；你并不能达到某个境界，如果你设想饱览群书能将你带到某个境界，单是想想如何去到那儿，你就不得不活上一千年，而等到你终于到达了，你也还得补上那落下的一千年。
对于外国电影、纪录片、古典音乐、奇幻小说、肥皂剧、幽默剧或是西部影片的取舍问题，这种认知同样适用。我看到人们根据不同类别进行广泛而激进的甄选：电视剧不重要，通俗小说不重要，影视大片也不重要。
精选很简单；它意味着大量的操控和运筹帷幄。而放弃却显得有点悲哀，那一刻你意识到自己与如此多的东西失之交臂。那一刻你明白到自己将错过绝大多数动听音乐、曼妙舞姿、艺术创作、各种图书以及影视作品，它们曾经出现过，也将永远存在。而现在，说不定在世界的某个地方，某一个表演正在进行，你可能会爱上的，却没办法欣赏到。
这很悲哀，但同时也……棒极了。想象你已经欣赏过一些美好的东西，或是知道某些美好的事情。想象你真的听完了所有“必听”的唱片、看完了所有“必看”的书籍和电影。想象你完成了所有人的清单，直到每一样你没读过的东西都没有必要真正地通读一遍。那将意味着自从我们人类第一次拿起小提琴进行创作到现在，这个世界所创造出的各种文化价值都是如此渺小而微不足道，区区一个普通人只用一辈子的时间就能将其全都吞进肚子里。那会让我们全都成为失败者，我是这么认为的。
假如“饱览群书”意味着“不错过任何东西”，那么没有人能谈得上博学。假如“饱览群书”意味着“诚恳努力巨细无遗地探索”，那么，是的，我们都能成为博学之人。然而，我们所看到的东西，都只是汪洋大海里的一杯水，即便转身背对大海，紧紧地盯着手中的那一杯，也改变不了这个事实。