I left out a couple of thoughts last week in what surely was among the most nonsensical "reviews" in the history of written communication.
First, I want to emphasize my point that although little insights of the highest caliber are certainly scattered throughout this extended work, the ones I captured in my book notes merely reflect those that caught my reading eye in January. It's natural that what I notice will change over time due to the accumulation of experience, but I suspect most of my transformation will be informed by my writing efforts; it is hardly worth the trouble of writing if we are not the first to learn from the experience.
Some may wonder if reading can lead to a similar change. I don't rule out the possibility, but I think writing is better suited for the task. The difference is generation - a reader becomes familiar with the end result in a certain context while a writer understands the process of creating the same conclusion regardless of the surroundings. I came across an intriguing example when I looked at Le Monde's "100 Books of the Century" list after learning A Room of One's Own placed #69 in the rankings. I realized that of the top twenty books, eighteen were written by men. I think it's plausible I would have noticed this even had I not written those TOA posts I referenced in last week's review, but I know this caught my eye now because of my writing.
Speaking of that list, I know it's always a shaky process to read too much into survey results, but I wonder if it presents another angle to my point regarding the difference in reading and writing. Surely, the readers surveyed were at least familiar with A Room of One's Own, yet ignored its argument as it settled into the bottom half of the top 100. So what did they think made the book any good if they didn't apply its argument to their assessment of the work? The highest ranked book written by a female author, The Second Sex, finished #11. I have not read Simone de Beauvoir's work but I'm confident enough to repeat my point - if you think enough of the book to rank it #11, to rank it behind the work of ten men, then you should probably have understood its message to the extent that you'd have had no choice but to rank it higher.
