the quest to become the redwood reader
on the agony of being a "serious reader"
for so long i struggled to be the ultimate reader and i agonized over the question:
what is the ultimate reader?
the question came in many forms:
what is the cool reader? what is the smart reader? what is the hot reader?
will i ever be like those two chicks on the white lotus?
will i be able, in my own mind, to consider myself a sexy and intelligent person?
will sexual partners be impressed when they first set eyes on my bookshelves?
and perhaps most importantly of all:
what is a well-read reader?
“A mature redwood adds, on average, a ton of wood to its mass every year. It can be up to 25 feet in diameter near the ground. Explorers in the 1840s immediately logged the trees extensively; by most reliable accounts, there were about 2 million acres in existence when first “discovered.” More than 96% of the tree’s earlier acreage was lumbered down to about 90,000 old-growth individuals. Most of these giant conifers are now within areas protected by the state or the federal government, sheltering in place against the multifarious threats of the outside world.”
(the extraordinary lives of coast redwoods by daniel lewis)
source: the “wild unknown” tarot deck
memory from january 2023:
my friend Joe is visiting me in brooklyn! he is here from Durham and we love hanging out together! we are staying up late taking edibles and now we are reading tarot cards while a candle burns. i want to know: “how should i approach my reading goals this year?”
we draw the ace of pentacles, which puzzles me:
pentacles are earthly things, material things. literature is a spiritual thing, history is a human thing.
then again i guess books are also physical things.
once we interpret this card in the context of the others, which point us in more spiritual directions, we conclude:
this is the year i must become
“the redwood reader.”
a redwood is massive: wide, tall, stretching high, these giants overwhelm us.
like a redwood, the well-read reader awes us with her lists of books completed.
when we look at her, we sense that her roots spread out across the whole world:
“The root system of the tree spreads roots laterally for ridiculous distances — nearly 100 feet, although in a relatively shallow fashion.”
(the extraordinary lives of coast redwoods by daniel lewis)
when i was in college, and for years afterward, i read books like this. i wanted to be smart, cool, sexy, interesting. this was the purpose of books. i wanted to awe people like a redwood tree when they contemplated the kinds of books i read, and i was always a little ashamed when someone mentioned a book i didn’t know.
back then, i only read classics, and i read them fast.
i was panicked: what if i never read all the most important classics?
reading in 2023:
in 2023 i have a goodreads goal: 60 books! i will become the redwood reader!
throughout the year, i sense that if i do not achieve this goal, i have failed.
i deliberately select short books so i can accumulate completed reads.
every day i open goodreads and i look to see if i am on track. when i am not on track, i panic, and i read:
i finish books i hate and i toss them onto the floor when done.
in the end i finish 40 books: i will try again next year!
the lesson i took from our tarot draw was that i had been reading too many books within the same genre. i needed to broaden my reading, read as diversely as possible.
then i would be a true redwood reader.
when i first started reading romance novels in 2021, i was hesitant to fully embrace them: the writing seemed… unserious.
my whole identity seemed to hinge upon being a serious reader.
the purpose of my books was to construct me into a serious person.
a serious reader reads serious books with serious sentences and serious thoughts.
a serious person knows about economics, history, the news, and congresspeople.
meanwhile romance writers are obsessed with feelings, love, and connection: and these days they’re not even trying to write sentences like jane austen would!
i think the backlash against romance’s growing popularity is simple: some take romance novels’ popularity as a sign of america’s degeneracy from the material to the spiritual; from the intelligent to the stupid; from the mature to the juvenile; from the adult to the child; from the serious to the unserious;
from the masculine to the feminine.
at least that is how i think the patriarchy processes romance novels.
“There’s something congregational about the redwoods in their groves: a group of worshippers, petitioners standing solemnly, upright before an even higher power than themselves; the calculus of wind, rain, sun, oxygen, carbon dioxide and time. Standing among the coast redwoods creates a sense of wonderment, delight and, ultimately, the knowledge of the tree’s right to exist, to not have to serve as a means to human ends. Awe isn’t the exclusive property of tourists, monks and rubberneckers. Scientists are driven not only by intellectual pursuits but also by astonishment — and by its cousin, desire. To claim that science is impartial and bloodless is incorrect.”
(the extraordinary lives of coast redwoods by daniel lewis)
the serious reader approaches reading like capitalism approaches the redwood:
destroy destroy destroy, obliterate obliterate obliterate,
and turn this being, this beautiful being, into something else, something material.
suck all the life out of this creature and turn its empty body into a vessel for my things.
the serious reader accumulates, accumulates, accumulates: reads as many books as possible: fancies himself enormous, wide, tall, overwhelming, intimidating.
but all the while there’s nothing in that head but facts and figures and a drive to impress people with:
the titles he can list in conversation;
analyses he can mention to decimate his political enemies;
statistics he can show when he sees that girls are looking at him.
he wants to use his books to sleep with women but not to speak with them. he wants them to think: this is a well-read man, not just a sports-fan man, but in truth his facts about the world beyond sports have little more depth than the facts of a sports fanatic.
he approaches all other beings like he approaches his books: they are within his orbit as things; they are material; he never truly goes beneath their surface. he does not engage with feeling.
to be a romance reader is to engage with feeling; and feelings are the reality of the beings standing in front of these serious readers, feelings are the reality of the literature these beings read only to be seen as smart.
when the serious reader enters into conversation about a book, he struggles to see beneath the surface of that book.
he cannot see beneath the surface of a book because he will never look at a redwood tree like a high priestess looks at a redwood tree: he will never see beneath the surface of his books because he will never see beneath the surface of any of his things at all, and in the worst case: he will never even see beneath the surface of his life. he will spend his whole life accumulating facts, figures, and things.
for the serious reader, the redwood is not a living being.
the redwood is a thing.
my buffy deck: tara as the high priestess
why strive to be serious readers? intelligent readers? cool readers?
the redwood reader is a reader who grows steadily, spreading her roots beneath the soil in whatever direction she feels like: she is a being: she is organic and she is driven by feeling: she is living and breathing and moving, never still and never stagnant, even when she is simply sitting there staring into space.
she is a human, and she is full of feelings and passions. the books she reads do not enlarge her social credentials: they deepen her very soul.
this is what it means to be a true redwood reader.
all photos my own
