“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.” ― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

I believe this because I read and I am f_cked up. If you read, you probably are, too.

Or perhaps, Pat Conroy said that in a novel because he wrote novels about people who were f_cked up, and/or he had to be f_cked up to write such novels. It’s a chicken and egg thing, whether reading f_cks you up or attaches itself to people who are already f_cked up.

The readers and writers who irritate me are the ones who don’t know they’re f_cked up or, worse yet, act like everyone on the planet except them is a jerk one way or another.

It comes down to this: being a writer does not make one a god and being a reader does not make one an angel. Those who think so, love calling attention to themselves as the pretentious arbiters of high-quality knowledge, taste, “proper” political agendas, and tantric orgasms. If they are writers, they have–or want to have–an MFA degree even though an MFA kills more writers than it nurtures. If they are readers, they think it’s important to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If there were a collective noun that suited the worst of readers, it would be a pretension of readers. The same noun might apply to the worst of our writers.

There’s nothing wrong with becoming an avid reader or a prolific writer if you don’t brag about it or openly proclaim that it puts you at the head of the line when the rapture comes. Those of us who write and/or read need to understand in spades that we’re not special, nor better than anyone who drives a garbage truck or labors as a longshoreman.

Readers who are f_cked up think they are God’s gift to the unwashed and that the rest of us need to treat them as such. You know the kind of people I’m talking about, right?

–Malcolm