Thread by @tressiemcphd

I am actually surprised to see some of the names in these replies. I don’t get why people care so much about the readability of books for which they are not the audience.

https://twitter.com/KBAndersen/status/1373277502735585284

If you are a celebrity or airport book writer or a television host (just a few of the careers therein), why do you care this much about a humanities text? That’s just strange.

Roseanne Cash. Lawrence O’Donnell. Jeff Jarvis (that one makes sense). Why are they invested in this so much?

I mean, Roseanne Cash?!!! If she turns out to be a secret red piller, that would be sad. Not shocking but sad.

Anyway, sometimes hard things are hard because you’re soft. Sometimes they’re hard to make you feel soft. Either way, if you are a person who produces writing for an audience, if you hold up a text for post publication review you have to be willing to accept it being done to you.

If you aren’t a person who produces writing for an audience, you get an opinion but you can also get mocked. You should also accept that. There is no shortage of “readable” books. Read one of those instead.

And considering how many people in that thread have books that are, shall we say, collectively written it isn’t an apples to apples comparison to scholarly writing.

I just want y’all to leave literature and critical studies alone. Even if they’re annoying, they’re fine. Just get another hobby. This one is weird.

Where did some of you get that the platonic ideal of a book is one that can be read by “anybody and everybody”? There is literally no such thing. Y’all are WEIRD. Live in a culture with all this free stuff to read and you’re worried about the three things you can’t.

Anyway, I didn’t even have coffee but now y’all got me convinced that Cash’s daughter is the feds and defending people who wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire and a hair’s breath from flaming a grad school colleague. I hope you’re proud of yourselves. I was minding my business.