High culture, low culture, and what I want to write

Although reading in depth is very difficult with my disability, and after years of having to rely nearly exclusively on audiobooks for my entertainment I've been finding myself deeply burnt out on them, I try to make a point to really challenge myself in my reading. To choose things that, while still within my range of interests, are dense, complex, nuanced, have interesting ideas, try new literary devices, or are part of the literary canon of whatever genre or subgenre I'm exploring. I push myself very hard, when I can, to read better and better things, as much as I can. I also try to make myself step out of the genres I'm comfortable with – mostly space opera science fiction, hard science fiction, and speculative fiction – to explore other genres like mystery, literary fiction, fantasy, romance, etc. I do this so rigerously – spending hours per book I add to my reading list to determine that it's worth my time and that I'll get something unique out of it – that many people have commented on it.

To a degree this is unhealthy and driven by childhood trauma that I'm not going to get into here. However, much of this is for a very simple reason: by pushing myself to read difficult things, I grow my mind. I get better at remembering details, interpreting texts, noticing nuances and subtility and being able to understand and think about them. I stay flexible, able to understand nonstandard literary devices.

I also gain more ideas for my art when I read high-brow art. I pick up new narrative and structural devices that can make my writing more interesting, more examples of ways to use prose and words that can give me greater range for writing different characters, or can be woven together to create richer a richer voice for myself. I also just get more and more examples of how to do things with writing. Elegently, efficiently, and stylishly – or baroquely, expressively, and impressionistically – conveying anything, even basic elements like the setting a scene takes place in, the spacial relations between things and their motion, and casual conversation, don't come naturally to anyone, and cannot be derived except through long experience or by learning by example from people who are actually really good at it. You can always tell the writing of someone who only reads fanfiction by their lack of repertoire!

I don't snobbily only consume "high literature," though. Especially when it comes to movies, but also in literature, I love pulp. Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Jordan (yes, The Wheel of Time is pulp – very long and impressive pulp, however), Stephen King (although in my opinion his best books transcend being "merely" pulp). Army of Darkness. The Crow. Even Equilibrium. Jujutsu Kaisen. From these, too, I can glean ideas, and tricks of the trade. Often they'll be less sophisticated than their equivalent high art, so it's important not to restrict my diet just to them, but enjoyment and rest is just as valid as learning new things, and I do learn new things from these fairly frequently, about what can be executed well and how. Furthermore, there's a spectrum – much of the art I consume is far more involved, complex, detailed, rigorous, and has far more interesting and new ideas, than what most people consume – compare, for example, Chasm City, with the average BookTok fantasy novel – and finding the optimal point on that spectrum, where you're pushing yourself and learning enough for it to be useful, but it isn't a total moonshot you won't repeat anytime soon (and then slowly pushing yourself up that curve) is important.

All I ask from the art that I want to engage with is that it know what it is and be in love with it, to fully embrace it, and excell at it. And often, to excell even at pulp, that requires great technical mastery! The age-old saying is true: one must understand the old-fashioned rules and be able to operate excellently within them to break them masterfully. That's the difference between a teenager's "anime" sketch in their sketchbook, and the art of Kentaro Miura.

Always remember: subversion is not a substitute for a good story.

I don't know if I'm capable of making very challenging or novel art – what we'd call high art, the kind of art that I seek out. I suspect I'm not. I'm just not that good at lateral and creative thinking, nor do I have that level of commitment and dedication to any one project. I think anything I make will inevitably fall into the pulp genre fiction category. The important thing, to me, however, is to write good pulp. Pulp that is able to borrow from the masters in a skilled and expert way, and use those tools to craft an excellent, sinewy story that grabs the reader and holds on to them, and maybe shows them something new they didn't know a pulp story could do. I also hope that I have interesting and unique enough views on philosophical topics – from technology and identity to epistemology and ethics – that when they shine through the text, as they inevitably will, readers will find something new and interesting to engage with there. However, my stories don't have messages. That destroys stories.