"You Should Date an Illiterate Girl" ... or not.

Ok so Facebook had several people linking to this blog today. In fact, my dear friend Katie reposted it on her blog today as well. It's clear that Katie and I sometimes think alike, because I, too, was struck by a desire to blog about this piece tonight. Well, sorta... I like/identify with the "Date a Girl Who Reads" response (especially the lines, "Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but, by God, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow." and "She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day.") But from a link in the first blog I found the original reference material. And I like that even more.

It's entitled "You Should Date an Illiterate Girl" and it's written by Charles Warnke. (Be sure to go to the second page, don't just stop after the first page... I almost did and it would have been a very unsatisfying conclusion.)

I think you should read it in it's entirety, but I'm going to quote the last paragraph because I like it so much:

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

and I would now like to install a quote from that age old classic Ten Things I Hate About You.

"But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you.
Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all."

You see all through the first half of the piece, this guy named Charles describes this sub-par life with a girl who cannot read, and throughout the second half he goes over the reasons why the girl who can read is worse than a girl who can't- why "a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell." And basically it breaks down to 4 reasons: 1) A girl who reads can call you on your bs and can tell when someone really loves her and when someone is just talking. 2) A girl who reads knows that there are ups and downs in life and will expect equal measure of both, but will move on if you only offer up a bitter and cynical attitude. 3) A girl who reads knows when something is over, and doesn't try to hold on to false hope. 4) A girl who reads will challenge you to be more than you think you can be and not accept less than your best.

What I think young Master Charles (I can call him young, he's 21!)  is saying is that a life lived in ignorance of what it could be is not that bad, when contrasted with a life made fully aware of what it could be and not ever being able to attain it. And sure, I get it. You don't miss what you never had. But it's too late for Charles. He knows what it's like to date a woman who reads, whose vocabulary makes his "vacuous sophistry a cheap trick," who, "knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment." I see this article veiled so thinly as cautionary advice to men to be an apology and love note in one. He respects the girl who can read... he likes that there is someone who can call him on his pompous overwrought language and knows when he's lying. He thinks it's good that she has enough self-respect to not accept bitterness as her due or to settle into a rut of acceptance. He admires her perception of the events in her life and her ability to move on when and if that time comes. He wants to be challenged and he thinks that the girl who reads deserves more than what he can offer.

Melissa has quoted a study on marriages lasting more than 50 years to me that says the thing most closely correlating to happiness in marriages is both parties considering themselves to be the lucky one in the relationship. What I think Charles Warnke is saying, is that he thinks that he would be the lucky one. He's "arguing" for a relationship in which one feels superior but what the dear boy really wants is to be the lucky one. Because, you see, girl who reads, mostly he hates the way he doesn't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

And that kinda makes me think he's adorable.