A great data-mining project by Virgil Griffith: He went to Facebook, found people’s favorite books, and plotted them against the average SAT score at their college. Do check out the link—the chart is massive. But some thoughts on Lolita as the highest-brow choice:
Fitzgerald coined that old saw: “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” If anything, Lolita exemplifies that, as a reading exercise: It requires you to be seduced and repelled by Humbert Humbert at the same time. It’s the most hateful love story imaginable. Here’s Martin Amis on the subject.
I’d argue that the same goes for 100 Years of Solitude and Crime & Punishment. For the first, you have to like the book without the expectation of a payoff, because the characters and action are so ephemeral and transitory; for the latter, the grace note, if you buy it, comes in sympathizing with a first-degree murderer.
Elsewhere, I’m surprised at Atlas Shrugged. It is really the document that gave millions of assholes (”libertarians”) their self-justification.
Via Kottke via O’Reilly Radar.
Don’t hate on Zane!
The SAT is more a measure of information retention than intelligence. “Freakonomics” probably tops the chart because of unimaginative, hard-studying MIT attendees. So then it’s not too surprising that “Atlas Shrugged” is up there too– after all, it’s the same type of cold, inhuman statistician’s logic that fuels SAT-pursuers and Libertarians.
[can you tell I kind of got an average score on the SAT?]
Did any of you actually read “Atlas Shrugged” without the oh-so-cool intellectual superiority complex exhibited here? Read it with an open mind and I think you’ll see something different.
Atlas Shrugged .. . . .. . the ego bible and hedon to do list. Don’t try and sell us another way to justify this madness…as long as you think you are seperate from the world, you have proven your misunderstand. Atlas Shrugged - geez! such a bad book about colonial capitalistic craptacular wannabe philosopher but truly sadist kind of book.