Hello! This feels, in a way, conceited but it’s my question! I have been reading a lot lately, some very intelligent authors, with very thoughtful characters, Like Dostoevsky, Camus, Baldwin, Morrison… It does seem though these characters fall into the realm of my own binary reasoning, where i tend to agree with them on most things and, I’m not sure if the things i disagree with are based in reality… i wonder if there are books, (i like literary fiction but for this sake i would read nonfiction), that glimpse into the world that I don’t quite understand, the world of thoughtless and selfish people? To help my understanding of what the heck is going on in the world around me.
I hope this question makes sense! Thank you for reading this!
Hmm, maybe try to read writers/characters that you disagree with politically.
A lot of humorous characters can be dumb as shit, in some ways at least. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are dumb in different ways, and thank god they have each other. Ignatius from A Confederacy of Dunces is dumb. Ebeneezer Cooke from The Sot Weed Factor is naive in the extreme. These characters are well-read, eloquent, and intelligent in one way, but their own inflexible worldviews and belief in their own intelligence make them essentially unable to function in the real world.
Brown Dog by Jim Harrison is an interesting character. In a conventional sense he is unintelligent. He’s a hillbilly who scrapes by in life. If he happens to get some money, he’s basically guaranteed to blow it within a day. He does some extremely stupid (and entertaining) things. But, he has this deep sort of folksy, humane wisdom, and you almost get the sense that he needs to be conventionally dumb in order to have it.
There are some very dumb characters in Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy. Harrogate is mind-numbingly stupid. The narrator, Suttree, is presented as very intelligent, but you could probably interrogate the aptness of that perspective as well.