Literature snobs are annoying; I know because I am one.  At parties they continually relate topics of conversation to obscure books they’ve read, which can often seem like posturing. With the hipster scene in full force and driven by the cult of the obscure, it’s easy to dismiss anyone who is interested in “weird,” (as the narrow-minded would say), or “intellectual” (as others are apt to mythologize them) hobbies or topics. However, to do so marginalizes those who genuinely and achingly extract every ounce of beauty, every unsung lesson, and every quirk of language books offer us. Yes, some people are pretentious posers, but others have read for the sake of the act and not the image it produces. This doesn’t make them intellectuals, per se, but intelligent. Either way, I think the negative connotations that accompany the term “intellectual” are a result of a potent cocktail of fear, jealousy, and boredom: people are afraid of what they don’t know, they’re jealous that the knowledge imparted isn’t part of their repertoire or created by them, and bored because when people don’t know something and hate that someone else does, it’s human nature to trivialize it in order to reassure their own sense of superiority. This sentiment is akin to, “Pfffttttt, whatever.” And it’s also the same sentiment that initially projected the negative image of the bouffant intellectual plotting society’s demise on its periphery that first emerged at the beginning of the twentieth-century with labor unrest, resurfaced during the communist witch-hunts perpetrated by the Feds during the McCarthy Era, and found a home with the Conservative Right in the 1980s through to the Texan of which we just rid ourselves. Perhaps this image of the shifty intellectual is why it just ain’t cool to be a book nerd: why kids across the nation down-play their intelligence to be part of the popular crowd, why women pretend to be ditzy so men won’t be too intimidated to ask for a second date, and why skepticism abounds when someone mentions the name of a philosopher in common conversation.

But books are awesome, and literature is amazing because of its ability to retain its relevance through time. When authors speak from their gut about issues that transcend nationalities or epochs and cut to the heart of that which makes us human, a bridge has been gapped: the bridge between intellectualism and emotionalism. Since emotions are what navigate us all, elitism is removed. And without an elite we’re all on the same playing field: equality for all. That said, I’m offering you a few quotes from my favorite authors and books I believe to be particularly relevant to us, in our times (in all times), but originating from other times.

We live in a country at war with an impoverished nation, unable to provide basic healthcare services to the majority of its citizens, unwilling to invest in credible public education; in short, we live in a country run by men and women who have been deafened by luxury and are unable to hear the screams of their constituents who want to connect, who want to live in a meaningful way but cannot see through the fog of our own maladjustments. Who hasn’t felt a less eloquent sentiment akin to that which was written by Allen Ginsberg in his seminal poem, Howl, which was published in 1956:

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by

madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn

looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly

connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-

ery of night…”

If Ginsberg provides us with an insight into the humanistic symptoms of a system of government that is sick, Henry D. Thoreau inspires the anger we need to fight systemic injustices and damn the man in his treatise titled, Resistance to Civil Govenment, which was written in the nineteenth century in response to the country’s illness at the time: slavery. Does anyone else think of Prop 8 when they read the following excerpt:

“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults and do better than it would have them?” And he goes on to say, “Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

So, in the 1950s Ginsberg diagnosed the symptoms of the America’s sick (its citizens). And they contracted their illnesses from a pervasive deformity within our own government that has been there, a cancerous growth constantly mutating to deter treatment and spreading all the time, since Thoreau’s time (same shit, different day). But leave it to Henry Miller and the introductory novel of his once-banned trilogy of books, The Tropic of Cancer (1961), to simplify and explain why we as a nation refuse to improve our lot:

“For the man in the paddock, whose duty it is to sweep up manure, the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses. To tell him that it is disgusting to spend one’s life shoveling up hot turds is a piece of imbecility. A man can get to love shit if his livelihood depends on it, if his happiness in involved.”

Which is all further proof that people are just people and the world is what it is: regardless of decade, regardless of personal preferences. That said, I’ll leave you with a little Dylan: The Times They Are A-Changing recorded live in 1965 in Manchester.