[1-2-Read] Pick Up The Book That Scares You The Most

Welcome to 1-2-Read, a fortnightly letter for paid subscribers! Every issue will give you ideas and practical exercises so that you can walk away as a stronger reader/writer! Your contributions keep the lights on around here, and thank you so much for your support!

(1) The Idea: Negative Capability

I’m a huge fan of horror movies and games. Growing up, I began my horror seeking with Goosebumps and graduated to watching playthroughs of Outlast on YouTube from legends like Pewdiepie and Markiplier. But there was one problem.

When it came to my turn to play these horror games on my PS3, I would clam up, freeze, and refuse to explore them myself unless I had watched the playthrough first. So, playing the games became retracing other players’ steps instead of diving headfirst into uncertainty.

Years later, when I started my literature degree, the same problem came back to haunt me. Before I read a single page of an assigned novel, I would gather all the research/criticism around that novel, study them and plan out my assignments because I didn’t want to walk away with silly interpretations. The results? My professors routinely said that my assignments felt stiff, way too academic and (this is the fatal blow) lacking in original insights.

This all blew up in my face when it was my turn to turn in an original piece of research during my honours year. I walked into my supervisor’s office, shut the door and saw him shaking his head: “You know, this is a patchwork of other people's stuff,” he scrolled through my first chapter on his iMac, “I want more of Waldun and fewer citations. Also, go look up Keats’ Negative Capability. I think you’ll like it.”

I darted straight for the library and got my hands on everything related to Negative Capability and found a letter from Keats to his brothers on the 22^nd of December 1818, where he wrote:

“I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

And it all started to click in my mind.

Negative Capability: what is it?