During Kanye West’s spectacular plummet last fall, my friends and I would often marvel at the latest outrageous thing he’d said. And we would send around clips of what were, in hindsight, terribly suspect comments he’d previously made. One such example was “I am not a fan of books,” which Ye told an interviewer upon the publication of his own book, Thank You and You’re Welcome. “I am a proud non-reader of books,” he continued. That statement strikes me as one of the more disturbing things he’s ever said, because, unlike the patently reprehensible anti-Semitic tirades that drew the world’s scorn, his anti-book stance is shared by some other highly influential figures. It’s disturbing because it says something about not only Ye’s character but the smugly solipsistic tenor of this cultural moment.
