Get It From Reading

About a week and a half ago I got an email from an editor at the New York Times with an intriguing request: “I wondered if I might interest you in writing a quick rap on reading for the New York Times Sunday Review section?” Write a rap about reading? That’s one of my favourite subjects! So I wrote this piece (reproduced below) and submitted it for print. It’s a summary of the top ten non-fiction books that changed the way I look at the world, and what makes them important.

Unfortunately, the Times decided to pass on it, for the stated reason that: “Raps are best heard, not read. I worry that this is going to seem flat on the page.” Ouch. I wrote back making the case for rap as a textual as well as an aural medium, arguing that there was nothing you could say about rap in that regard that isn’t also true of all poetry from Shakespeare to Edgar Allen Poe. Not to gratuitously compare myself to the greats, but Shakespeare is also meant to be performed, and there is still something to be gained from reading it, surely.

My hunch, however, is that the content of my rap put them off at least as much as any sense that the genre itself isn’t fit to print. I might be wrong, and slights against homeopathy and scientology and James Frey as memoirist and other absurdities may have played no role in their decision, but from this vantage I can only speculate. One might as well question the will of the gods as the whims of editors.

They did invite me to submit the recorded song to be hosted on nytimes.com as part of their reading theme, but that will be at the discretion of yet another editor. Hence, rather than allow this fine work to die in the inbox of the New York Times, I’m going to do what I usually do and just put it out myself.

Presenting “Get It From Reading,” including hyperlinks to learn more about each of the books, and a brand new free Mp3 download produced by Mr. Simmonds.

Get It From Reading

My reading habits resemble the neediness of speed addicts
Like James Frey in A Million Little Pieces, fiending for chapters
But unlike Frey, in my case it really happens
I won’t exaggerate just to get a seedy reaction
I can’t sleep ‘til I’ve had it – starin’ in bed at the ceilin’
I need a perspective shift, and I think I’m hooked on the feelin’
I rarely get it from fiction; I find information appealin’
So my Top Ten begins with Ed Wilson, Consilience
And now the unification of knowledge is my policy
Jared Diamond taught me history via biogeography
Guns, Germs, and Steel – that’s a Pulitzer Prize
Scientology? Homeopathy? That’s pseudo-science
You can find evidence-based medicine at BadScience.net
The more you read, the less you believe the flying saucer set
And thanks to non-fiction I can tell you why I’m godless
Besides my intuition that all religion is nonsense
Logical arguments for god’s existence get debunked
One by one when Dawkins brings out the heavy guns
But if you wanna know where The God Delusion comes from
Read David Sloan Wilson, Evolution For Everyone

Some people get it from eating
And other people get it from breeding
Well I can get a thrill from these things
But I can even get it from reading
From reading? From reading
I can even get it from reading
‘Cause I need it
I need it so bad

These are the reads that make my whole perspective swell
I still remember when I discovered Heath and Potter’s The Rebel Sell
I bought a dozen copies for my friends, like: “Frickin’ hell!
It’s non-conformity that makes economies jet-propel!”
That’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially if you’re a rebel
As far as I can tell, though, the evidence is clearly settled
Just like the social cost of opulence that’s near a ghetto
Inequality is bad for us all, read The Spirit Level
And when I search for meaning, I’m not much of a meditator
I’d rather read Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature
Live inside certain books, and provide an escalator
To climb The Moral Landscape, and be a suffering mitigator
And that’s my pathway, I collect facts in prose
And spin them into rhyme flows, and spit raps at shows
And recently I cracked Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow
And I felt my System 2 catapult – that’s the dope!
Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t hate fiction
I try to find space in my day for escapism
But these are the books that rearranged my brain rhythms
And if you can change those, the world can change with ‘em

Works Cited:

1. Dawkins, Richard: The God Delusion
2. Diamond, Jared: Guns, Germs and Steel
3. Goldacre, Ben: Bad Science
4. Harris, Sam: The Moral Landscape
5. Heath, Joseph and Andrew Potter: The Rebel Sell
6. Kahneman, Daniel: Thinking, Fast and Slow
7. Pickett, Kate and Richard Wilkinson: The Spirit Level
8. Pinker, Steven: The Better Angels of Our Nature
9. Wilson, Edward O: Consilience
10. Wilson, David Sloan: Evolution For Everyone