Reading on the Subway

What people read on the subway is a kind of infinite topic, but yesterday I was really annoyed by these high school kids (who weren't reading anything, and were behaving really badly) on the train. They were just dumb. And I thought, well, here I am reading PARADISE REGAINED, and here they are just kind of babbling and swearing, and it just sucks to be surrounded by idiots while I'm trying to get work done. But then I thought about it for a while and came to rather a different conclusion.

Because, (to borrow some italics from "Grindhouse") I was reading. They weren't. By which I mean, I have prioritized my own reading since I was in 2nd grade. I was fucking precocious. I was reading THE ILIAD in 2nd grade, and from then on I was reading about six years ahead of my grade level, which meant that I had to read everything twice: BEOWULF, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, JULIUS CAESAR, THE STRANGER, HERODOTUS, THE INFERNO, etc, all in middle school. I know, for instance, that Talya was like this as well.

It is hard to say which is the cause or effect. I made it a priority to read PETER PAN and ALICE IN WONDERLAND when I was really young, because I knew I wouldn't be able to enjoy them as much when I was older. That's weird! But actually the whole idea of "reading at one's grade level" is messed up, because I was reading: none of the other kids on my school bus were. It's not like when I was reading DON QUIXOTE, they were trying to catch up. Kids just didn't read.

In a way, I don't which I should prefer: to just BE smart or to have accomplished it myself. Obviously it's a bit of both, but let's just say I worked on it. And the moral here is, not that stupid people don't exist, or that everyone could eventually be as smart as everyone else, but that we always give up the game too early. I started reading very early, I still read. I read all the time. And unless someone is only reading trashy mystery books or airport fiction, if you can find someone who can say the same thing, I bet they are not an abject moron either. [They may not be cute and sweet like me, but that's another question.]

And here, either you agree with me, or your position is like, "dumb people know their place; why should they force themselves to read FAUST when they just want to read Allure?" I'm not okay with that question, since to me, there is obviously a class issue here: my parents were college graduates, they prized these things, they imbued me with a love of reading, and maybe everyone doesn't get to Foucault--that's fine. But it seems to me the question is always ceded *far* too early.

There are two corollaries to this:
1) In the academic world, after a certain point, it doesn't matter how smart you are. The person doing "interesting work," who has committed themselves to worthwhile values, to a rigorous methodology, to a love of literature over careerist aims, to pedagogy rather than name-dropping, to books instead of trends, may not be any smarter than someone else: but this work will be worth reading, and other stuff, perhaps written by more intelligent people, won't.
2) Cinema literacy: I got a head start on this early, too. I think everyone should. It should be taught in high school. Talya just watched "The Bicycle Thief" the other day. I had to watch that in a class in high school, and I'm all the better for it. (It's about man's search for dignity).

To be honest--a love of learning, a love of culture, having principles, etc., these things stand above raw intelligence: in my world they are the only things that matter.
And, this makes almost the entire world one extended major bum-out.