When being well-read doesn't pay off, and other problems of main character syndrome.
The problem of reading books instead of letting them read you.
It was the late 1990s, and Jane Austen was hot.
Every movie was either based on Austen, Alcott, Gaskell, James, one of the Brontes, Trollope, or the like. It was all Merchant Ivory and Miramax productions. It was wonderful and also introduced me to the concept of main-character syndrome.
Main character syndrome is the belief that you are the central protagonist of your life. This would seem to make sense: the person we know best, the one in every moment of our life, is ourselves. The problem lies in our inability to see other people or situations as anything other than secondary or somehow serving our personal narrative. Wherever we go, whatever we do, whatever we consume, what we read—we are the main character. Out to eat at a restaurant? Serve me well, people, because I’m the main character here. Etc.1
In talking about all of these wonderful Austen-like films, people would happily discuss which character they were. And I can honestly tell you that when people asked me, my answer was not Elizabeth Bennet or Anne Elliot. The answer to which character I would be if I were in those stories was simple: probably the scullery maid.
By all means, enjoy yourself a wee bit of dreaming and pretend that you’re going to marry Mr. Darcy, but you cannot live in that daydream, nor can you stretch a metaphor too hard to fit the narrative of your life. While it’s easy for the reader to identify with the hero and main character, and therefore apply her personal worldview to that fictional character and extrapolate for today, it’s unlikely that’s what the author had in mind.
That’s an abuse of the text.
I’m all for using literature to escape or to understand deeper aspects of life than non-fiction could ever explain, but such merciless application is disingenuous to both the context and the author, and it also prevents us from learning well from our reading. It takes a universal story or idea and staples it down like a tent over the limited experience in our own lives. Its meaning covers only what we know and understand; it does not expand us personally.
We prize literacy and hold in high regard those who read the challenging classics, but the same problem people have with the Bible lurks in reading literature: they read themselves and the news headlines into it instead of understanding the work’s context in the time it was written.
For example, if you are upset about what is happening in Minnesota and despise ICE and are using all the appropriate hashtags and emoticons, surely Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Winston Smith and Gandalf would agree with your understanding of current events. They have been your best friends these many years; of course they are in agreement and, therefore, it is no problem to mangle every book you read into the worldview you prefer. Who cares about the author’s context, or his other writings that give us a hint at what the author believed and intended? This is a narcissistic culture, and every great story is about me and mine.
This does a great disservice to authors.
It also does a great disservice to readers.
The saying goes that the Bible reads us, not the other way around. This is possible because it is a living book (Hebrews 4:12). In some sense, timeless classics are timeless in their story and in human nature and can do the same. We should let them read us and force us to understand a deeper (and often uncomfortable) truth.
If I am able to pile up every book I’ve ever loved and find a way to force them to say that everything a particular political figure does is bad, I’m a terrible, sloppy, and disrespectful reader. Or, perhaps I’m a needy reader, requiring that the friends in the pages not be teachers but nod along to my every belief. Perhaps I’ve never opened a book and wondered where it will take me, instead insisting that it will always reinforce what I thought about the world when I opened it.
Let’s look at a popular example: George Orwell.
Eric Blair, better known as the author George Orwell, wanted to experience poverty to better understand it. There was value in having the experience to better understand something before writing about it. He may have gotten a better taste than he planned when a thief stole his money. For a few years in the late 1920s, he lived in cheap apartments, worked wearying, low-paying jobs, and knew what it was to feel hungry and be homeless at times.2
Then he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London, a social critique mixed with memoir. His experiences also—and how could they not?—influenced his later works, including 1984 and Animal Farm.
Orwell’s 1984 is known to most (I think) because we had to read it in high school. The gist of it is that totalitarian power is the ultimate evil, that language can be used as a tool to control minds, that surveillance and the loss of privacy are weapons, that torture and psychological breaking are necessary in order to not just control outward obedience but inner self, and that controlling history, truth, and information is necessary in order to manipulate.
During the pandemic, in which using certain words got you kicked off or banned on various social platforms, in which people across the nation lost jobs because they refused injections they didn’t want in their physical body, in which we didn’t get to have funerals and watched loved ones die alone behind glass, in which we categorized people as either essential or nonessential, in which we got families to turn on other family members, in which we got neighbors to report other neighbors, in which we social beings were forced to isolate and develop mental illnesses, in which an entire generation’s education crashed, in which we willingly gave up our privacy by gluing ourselves to screens and devices, in which we were gaslit when “thought leaders” and the media attempted to deny what was happening (whether it be riots or lockdowns) by insisting it be called something it was not, in which the government placed heavy controls on what information was allowed on social platforms and in the news, in which misuse of certain words and stating obvious facts (such as those related to gender) would get you fired or require a public hara-kiri—in which we got a significant taste of 1984.
It was not a misuse to draw that comparison between the global and national response to the pandemic and what Orwell said in his book; it was a direct application. It was a literal embodiment of what he described in his fictional tale. It was watching 1984 become non-fiction, a time when nearly everyone learned what it meant to be gaslighted.3 We could see what was happening, but were told no, that is not what you are seeing. Suddenly, people were flocking to Solzhenitsyn and learning about Vaclav Havel’s greengrocer. Rod Dreher’s book Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents became a daily manual. People were being asked to show their vaccination papers just to eat in a restaurant. It was Orwellian.
However, just because a government or policy you do not like exists does not make it Orwellian. The mere presence of the federal government, particularly in enforcing the laws that have been on the books for decades and generations, is not Totalitarianism. It is simply governance. AI, your smart watch, and Alexa are more Orwellian than the enforcement of immigration laws.
And now we get to the heart of why I wrote all of the above: I stumbled upon an Instagram/Facebook account where the owner, a—to borrow a cherished phrase today—privileged white woman selling subscription boxes of literary books and related products, seemed to have lost the plot in the past few weeks.
I hadn’t been on the app for a while and was surprised to see an account dedicated to literature suddenly turn into an anti-ICE account. She was applying Milton Mayer’s book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Elie Wiesel’s Night to immigration enforcement. (Yes, Godwin’s Law for the win.) Then came a photo of four books the woman studied in grad school, to push back against people who simply asked her to keep politics out of her once-literary-focused feed.4 I’m not sure of the need to post college books, other than, perhaps, a need to let people know that a level of education and reading inoculates a person from being ignored or unimportant, and therefore, blowback is unreasonable?5
“Minnesota really is our North Star state,” she wrote, claiming they were showing compassion in the face of oppression.6
Additional posts likened our nation to fascism, that we might be like Narnia’s Edmund in that we’d trade our family for candy, compared the situation to how Scrooge was brought to a broken heart by how he treated the poor, periodic posts about needing to take a mental break, some Tolkien quotes suggesting that the Minnesota protesters were Aragorn and company whose courage would not fail, a post with an American flag stating that Gondor calls for aid, and finally, a few pushback posts about why she needed to speak up about politics when her audience was asking her not to because they didn’t want to deal with politics in that account, with yes-men in the comments sections. (Or, to be more accurate, yes-women, because it’s nearly always women doing this.)
It’s her right to say what she wants; if she chooses to process that emotion publicly, I understand. I don’t know that I think it was wise to do so on her business page, particularly with hyperbole that will feel foolish in a year, but that is her choice. I don’t want to mention the company because I don’t wish her any ill will.
But I’m struck by the photos of her nice home, her sitting on a couch with a cozy chenille blanket and lovely books, bright and sunny and safe, posting cozy filtered photos calling for uprising and thinking she’s fighting a battle with her social media posts on the same page she’s selling books, trying to elevate the denigration of law enforcement (yes, ICE and CBP are law enforcement) to something literary and noble; it is the existence of law enforcement (and the rule of law) that allows her to live this way, to read these books. There is an incredible level of disconnect and, sadly, main character syndrome. I have to wonder if all the books she’s proud to say she’s read have had any impact at all, because in this moment, it seems she didn’t let them read her.
“Have you taken time to speak to anyone in ICE and CBP to hear their experience also?” I commented before unfollowing her account (I was there for books, not politics). Remember, Orwell valued experience enough to live it. The best thing we can do if we can’t live it is to talk to someone who has.
I politely asked, because I hope, in some moment, she might remember that, as a lover of stories, there are at least two sides to every story, generally more, and she ought to be curious enough to seek them out. She ought to know that in the best stories, the heroes are imperfect and often not who we think they are at first. She ought to know that unreliable narrators abound, especially so in the media.
A true book lover ought to want the full, complex plot.
A true book lover ought to know that the exciting thing about a used book store is finding the dusty book that isn’t getting all the attention but still has something important to say. It’s listening to the police officer instead of the pink-haired harpy that eats up the camera footage.
But instead, it’s a steady diet of social and mainstream media bestseller narratives, which isn’t broadening horizons but narrowing them. She ought to remember that Orcs might have once been elves, twisted into shrieking, angry beings cowering at the sidelines, turned from glory into something hideous from constant torture and being bathed in lies.
Perhaps the danger is living too much in the perfect world of literature, where, safe on our couch, we imagine we’re fighting Sauron and his minions instead of trying to learn the universal human experience it depicts, instead of considering the deep spiritual matters—the deep magic—woven within. Or perhaps the danger is much more basic: the assumption that everything is about us, is our business, is a direct affront to us, and is personal. We can all make this mistake, regardless of politics.
What’s going on in Minnesota (and wherever else) isn’t about us. In simple terms, it’s the federal government enforcing federal law, just like all the other presidents before.7 It’s not an orange-toned Saruman or Sauron sending in the dank hordes to destroy truth, justice, and the American way. The American way is destroyed in a much more insidious manner: people get what they want. It is just as Bradbury warned against in Fahrenheit 451, which is not about book censorship as the libraries like to insist, but a degraded people getting what they want.
Being well-read and versed in the classics and fine literature is a wonderful thing—and maybe even an upper-level degree is a wonderful thing, unless you wield it in such an ungainly manner as proof you have the right to browbeat an audience interested in classic book boxes—unless you are unable to discern reality from myth, unless you are unable to wisely extract correct metaphors, and unless you suffer from main character syndrome. Being well-read should not be the number of books you’ve read, but the number of books you’ve let read you.8
I guess I’d say that, if at the end of this you are someone who still sees no problem with the behavior I’ve described, go read Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron and talk to me about affirmative action and DEI. I think it could be an interesting discussion.
UPDATE: Two weeks later (February 11, 2026), I decided to check my Instagram and saw that the response of this highly educated graduate-degreed literature-loving white woman (I include that last bit because in her world, from what I can gather, privilege and inclusive categories mean so much) had this response:
The number of hashtags suggesting wisdom through reading doesn’t mean anything. If you just want pretty books with pretty covers, where the book is the object and the contents less so, by all means, buy. I love beautiful books, too. But I don’t think it’s wise to look to this source for understanding. At this point, I see no need to hide the business account name when the reply is so childish.
To be fair, however, I did use the business contact page and asked if the owner would be willing to do an email interview. This is what I sent:
Hello. Two weeks ago, I left a comment on an Instagram post asking whether you had spoken with any law enforcement about ICE and CBP, given the broad statements you were making about immigration enforcement in Minnesota. Your response to me was, “I am pro-murder, and it makes me sad that you haven’t talked to the murderers. Barf.” (Please note that I have family in CBP.)
I apologize for the delay in response; I don’t get on Instagram very much. I did reply to you there, however, genuinely asking some questions about how a person who loves literature and complex, classic stories would view a current event with simplistic context. I wrote a blog post about it two weeks ago, after my initial exposure to your Instagram account (which I had been following, as I also love to read) and my surprise at the posts you’d begun sharing, as well as your reasoning for doing so. I was also surprised by your response to my question (noted above) and wondered if you would be interested in an email interview not only about your reasoning for posting about such things recently, but also about your approach to applying literature and story to how we understand the world around us. You’ve indicated that you have a graduate degree, and I would be interested in sharing with my blog readers how you decided this was the best approach. As is evident in my original blog post, I heartily disagree with your approach, but am always willing to consider another viewpoint. Thank you for your time.
Selfies and video social media have made this not only worse, but profitable.
“George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London – the Live Performance,” The Guardian, April 28, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/28/george-orwell-down-out-london-paris-live-performance.
And unfortunately, in his home nation, it is still somewhat in place. What you say online in the U.K., should it be in conflict with what the government has defined as acceptable speech, might get you arrested there.
Legitimacy in Public Administration by O.C. McSwite, Bureaucracy by James Q. Wilson, Postmodern Public Administration by Charles J. Fox and Hugh T. Miller, Bureaucracy and Self-Government by Brian J. Cook.
Notably absent from the photo of the reading material justification was a copy of the U.S. Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and other founding documents. It’s telling that it was books from grad school, and that they were nearly all about bureaucracy.
If you’re a business that has developed a tightly honed market, your audience understands your brand accordingly. Dropping politics into a non-political brand, particularly in today’s toxic realm where people are trying to keep that darkness out of their lives, is a big decision. If you’ve judged your audience correctly and they are all in on your politics, you can get away with it. If you’ve assumed your audience is like you, and that all people who love literature must think a certain way, you may be surprised. There are more than a few people who are center-right who enjoy a good book.
We mistake our audiences, which is understandable if someone is projecting themselves onto their books, because, of course, you would project your interests on your audience even if, up until then, your audience had gathered for an entirely different reason. It’s a bait-and-switch, and those who get defensive and feel the need to explain by mentioning grad school and doubling down when there’s pushback should liken it to their own reaction if they ordered a veggie burger and received a bacon cheeseburger instead.
This is one of the reasons my “About” page makes it clear that Lone Prairie is a literary and ideological blender; it’s not a finely tuned brand. Chaos and rabbit trails are the brand. The result is that the audience is small and demographically scattered, making it impossible to market to or advertise to.
Minnesota is surprisingly conservative outside of the Twin Cities. I don’t think people quite grasp that the Twin Cities are not the whole picture of the state.
President Obama was known as the “deporter in chief” due to deporting more people than any other president. He deported over 3.1M people using ICE. He stated that his focus was on recent illegal crossings and criminals, but the data suggest that a significant number of deportations didn’t fit either category. Obama gave Tom Homan, who is currently in the Trump Administration, an award for his work on deportations. Was Gondor calling for aid back then?
The book Dead Man Walking read me hard. I’m still struggling to decide on the matter, a decade later.
Ah, _Harrison Bergeron_, my beloved counter to all things progressivist…
In spite of the homosexual fan service in the notorious nude romp around the pond (Merchant, Ivory, AND Forster all beholden to the "love that dare not speak its name"), the predominantly heterosexual _A Room with a View_ remains my favorite film of the type you mention. I pretty much saw myself in every character, so maybe I'm the worst sort of narcissist, or maybe the book and the film read me accurately.
All that said, I host a book club for young adults 18–30 at the library where I work. We discuss works of speculative fiction—fantasy, horror, science fiction—and I am pleased to note that the attendees do a noble job of NOT making everything in the novels about themselves. So, there is hope.
This month, we are reading _The Man in the High Castle_ by Philip K. Dick, so we're getting a good look at what real fascism looks like, not the "those people do not hold my views, so they are bad, bad, bad" fascism we are mired in today.
Anyway, thanks for the piece. Insightful as usual.
The exchange described above is familiar to many in the field of history, though perhaps less common than in the field of literature. One advantage of being a dissenter is that if you hold strongly to the liberal values that give these fields their real meaning, instead of retreating into your own ideological bubble, you get stretched further, and you become more eclectic. The downside is, as you say, that you tend to reach only a small audience. Very good piece.