The other day, I saw a book entitled A Guide To Reading Dostoyevsky.
And I thought to myself, “Yeah, I could get behind that. A book about reading. Everyone should read, and why not learn to read better?” And even better, this book was in someone’s possession, meaning presumably they were reading it and not just using it as ridiculous toilet paper.
And I thought, again, to myself, “I suppose there must be a lot of call for this book, being as it’s been published and sold. How ever did people read Dostoyevsky before the advent of this book? Could they possibly have read each and every word, processing their meanings both alone and in the context of other words? The chances of this happening are slim to none.” Conclusion: Dostoyevsky wrote a lot of books that no one understood until recently, when one person received some kind of divine inspiration and decided to share that with the world in obscure book form.
And then I thought, yet again, to myself, “But what if Dostoyevsky wrote A Guide To Reading Dostoyevsky. It makes sense. He writes the Guide to increase the sales of his previous books. Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov – nothing without the Guide. But what a huge illogicality! You’d have to understand Dostoyevsky to read a book that teaches you how to understand Dostoyevsky.” Conclusion: you’d be fucked
And then, as it does when such an important paradox is exposed, the world folded in on itself.