Rules for being a dilettante

I remember once talking to a fellow student, and when he told me he was studying architecture, I asked him what his favorite style of house was. I think I was asking because I had just realized how in love I am with wraparound porches, though that did not really work with my admiration of Tudor cottages and hacienda style homes. Maybe, as I was at a university, I was just starting to realize how many different things there were in the world, which still fascinates me.

I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect that he was not going to answer because I did not know enough about the subject to really understand his response and he didn’t want me to feel like I knew anything by his treating the question with any respect.

That probably makes him sound like kind of a jerk, and there was other evidence for that, but there could also be a valuable point here. Out of all of the different disciplines, with all of the information in each one, there are going to be people who will pick an area and specialize and become experts in that area, which takes a lot of work and devotion, and it is fair for them to feel some sense of accomplishment, and fair for them to feel irritated with people who read one book and then feel like an expert.

I have a great deal of respect for experts, and I certainly don’t intend to annoy them, but I gravitate towards the other end of the spectrum, wanting to see how all of the different fields fit together. I remember in college thinking that I would be more likely to go for a second baccalaureate degree rather than a masters because (especially in history), postgraduate work is about becoming more and more specific.

For example, a doctoral thesis could be fabric use by haberdashers in northwest Seattle from 1935-1939, and that sounds like an exaggeration, but not as much as you might think. What I want to be doing is tracing the cyclical nature of empires or interpreting a century’s worth of history via pop culture, and that requires a broader base.

Part of why I have been thinking about this is the futility of trying to become educated on comic books. It’s not that it is impossible to learn, and I have learned. It’s just that the more you learn, the more you see there is to learn, until you have a never-ending task before you.

When I started out, I had in mind that I would definitely want to read Maus, and Persepolic, and The Umbrella Academy, and some Flaming Carrot and maybe some Elfquest and definitely some Harvey Pekar. Then, talking to one friend I remembered the existence of Ghost World and she handed me a Love and Rockets someone had given her. Then I talked to another friend who recommended the Amulet series and Rapunzel’s Revenge. Then I realized that I did not have any traditional superhero comics, so I checked out a Wolverine and The Complete Frank Miller Spiderman, which is great, because that gave me some exposure to Frank Miller, but then the Wolverine is Frank Miller too, and so my only exposure to traditional superhero comics is Marvel and is Frank Miller. And I still hadn’t read any Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman!

My point is that after reading fifteen books and a magazine, there is still a lot that I do not know and am loathe to comment on. Even with this round, I am not done. I can probably finish The Flaming Carrots Greatest Hits today and Watchmen in a couple of days, but Ultimate Sandman Volume One is mammoth, and is going to take at least a week.

Also, I realized that I really need to take a field trip to a comic book shop. With the exception of Flaming Carrot, which I bought, and Love and Rockets, which I borrowed, everything has come from the Washington County Library system, which is great, but that means these are bound, completed books. Going and seeing where they are sold in magazine form would be its own experience. The good news is that my sisters are in, and hey, if we go to Heroes and Hobbies we can go to Wunderland too, but is that enough? They’re completely nocturnal there, with a big focus on games. Is that typical? Can I work in trips to Awesome Card and Comics and Floating World Comics too? (And seriously, if anyone can provide feedback on any of these stores, or wants to come, let me know.)

So that’s the challenge, and one thing is, when I do my various history months, I always know that the next year will bring another month, and I am not trying to get everything done in a single month, and that is fine. Maybe I need to decide that at some point in the future I will read some DC comics, and some Marvel that does not have Frank Miller or Chris Claremont on it, so I have some balance. There are some things where I already know I will read more, and I will get more into that as I continue blogging. There is a lot I don’t know, but I still have thoughts.

If I end up annoying true comic experts, well, that is not my intent, but consider that I may be more accessible to some who are not currently interested in comics, but may end up becoming so. Unless you’re thriving on the isolation. Some people do.

I have heard dilettante used more as a pejorative, but the dictionary does not really back that up. Well, the second definition sort of does, which is “a person having a superficial interest in an art or branch of knowledge; a dabbler.” The use of the word superficial is a little negative, I suppose. The first definition, though, is “an admirer or lover of the arts.” I can live with that. You know how the root of “amateur” is love? For dilettante, it comes from delight. Yeah, that sums it up for me.

There are good guidelines, or rules, to keep in mind though. First, always respect the experts. Understand that there are things that you don’t know, and that other people do know. Really, humility is a good general rule for all aspects of life. Also, and yes, this is largely for the News Radio reference but is still totally true, if you are not actually a qualified surgeon you should not remove someone’s appendix, even if you do end up doing a good job.