Thinking

version

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version

Well-known member
Last year I had an epiphany that I never really thought about anything. I just read books/websites etc. and ingested other people's thoughts.
I struggle with this too. I think about things, but it's shallow thinking that leans too heavily on other people's thoughts. I still haven't found a way out of it. The people who come up with their own systems and theories and whatnot I find quite staggering. I don't know how you'd even begin to do something like that.

Having said that, I don't know how I'd define deep or complex thinking either. Both imply some form of organisation to me and thinking's always struck me as incredibly messy.
 

version

Well-known member
Another thing that bothers me is the sense that re/paraphrasing stuff is "cheating". Say I read a bunch of books and articles on cacti, I'd feel very conscious of combining what I'd read in order to come up with a response if someone were to ask me about them. My inclination would be to just link or refer to the source material directly.

Obviously everything's synthesis and everyone's using stuff they've picked up from others, but I frequently feel I have to qualify every single thing, e.g. stating that I remember reading something somewhere rather than just saying whatever it is. I also feel that reading things is never enough. I can read a book on something, but unless I personally did the work behind it and wrote the book myself then it all feels superficial, I don't really know anything about it and I'm just regurgitating whatever it is I've read.

I even get this with something like the The Pound Era. It's brilliant and I'm really enjoying it, but there's a nagging part of me that says "... but he's just rearranging stuff he's read and heard... ".
 

craner

Beast of Burden
This is true to an extent, but then you could also argue that The Cantos are just a rearrangement of stuff read and heard, and then you are already a long way down the road of everything is stolen nothing is new I hate myself and I want to die. That’s depression talking, rather than the imagination. Alternatively you could argue that The Pound Era, in its rearrangements of materials and the ideas and insights that sparks, is as creative and original as The Cantos are, which is a lot more productive, fun and, potentially, creative. It’s probably best not to get hung up on what is superficial and what is deep, and just get your mind moving in whatever direction it wants to go.
 

version

Well-known member
The guidebook aspect is another thing. If I read Pound, don't understand him then read Kenner or someone else then I still don't necessarily understand him - I've just been given the answer. It's like getting stuck on a crossword, flipping to the back and then filling them in. "This means this, not because I've deduced it, but because someone else has told me that's what it means and I don't know any better."
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
The guidebook aspect is another thing. If I read Pound, don't understand him then read Kenner or someone else then I still don't necessarily understand him - I've just been given the answer. It's like getting stuck on a crossword, flipping to the back and then filling them in. "This means this, not because I've deduced it, but because someone else has told me that's what it means and I don't know any better."
It's very hard not to default to getting the answer from someone else isn't it? even if you know that that answer is wrong or unsatisfying.

Like in a modern art gallery the eye inevitably wanders to the little captions even tho you know they're glib and silly and will ruin the whole thing
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
you still have to interpret stuff for yourself. You have to decide how much you trust the source, how much it makes sense, how much you agree with it. And when you formulate your own understanding and share it with others, that's an act of thinking: how to explain those ideas and to what depth and in a way that makes those ideas make sense to whatever audience you have for them.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
I think a lot of the "original" thinkers, their ideas make sense in a way that you just haven't ever thought about articulating, or ever tried to. It's like a join-the-dots for me: the points are there, and when the lines are drawn between them it makes sense, I just would never have tried to do it the same way.
 

version

Well-known member
With someone like Pound, I suppose you have to take into account that it's not just about working it out; some of it's down to having read the texts he's pulling from. You're not going to be able to understand that something's from Ovid unless you're familiar with Ovid or someone tells you that's where it's from. There's no sitting around puzzling it out. You either know it or you don't.
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
Yes but getting something from it, it sort of echoing for you, even when you don't know the sources he's taking from...that's the magic isn't it. It's not just incomprehensible or a wall of stuff you don't recognize. There's something you recognize on an immediate level
 

version

Well-known member
The thing with guidebooks as well is somebody had to work it all out without a guide for the guides to be written. I remember reading one of the contemporary reviews of Gravity's Rainbow and being impressed by how much of it the reviewer had caught at a time when few had read and discussed it.
 
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