The Idiot Reader

When I was a freshman, I took a creative writing workshop with Gregory Frost in which we coined the term "idiot reader." For every story shared in a workshop of twevle, there is always someone who just can't gain purchase on your style or material. I love minimalist prose and understated endings, but will reject a story without a second chance if the author doesn't let me get inside the character, or deliberately creates an unsympathetic character even though I understand this can be a stylistic choice.

Announcing "I think I'm the idiot reader" is a way to explain you were unable to connect with a story without directly criticizing the author's stylistic choices or content. If a writer has several idiot readers, they then may want to reassess.

I'm sometimes the idiot reader outside my fiction workshop. Cars are sexy? I'm the idiot reader. Umbrellas are useful? Idiot reader (and a stubborn one). Diamonds are pretty? Idiot reader.

I discovered today I'm also the idiot reader when it comes to the importance of tracing Alexander the Great's family tree. Let me backtrack. I was fantasizing about trips I could take the summer before grad school, and started looking for Silk Road backpacking trips. This led me to look up the Kalash, an ethnic group living in Chitral, Pakistan, near China.

There's a lot of contraversy over whether the Kalash are the descendents of Alexander the Great, a claim they themselves make. Some visitors have found similarities between them and ancient Greeks, and as always, there's the Western fascination with a fair complexioned group where it isn't expected.

I am in no position to assess the acccuracy of this claim, although it sounds plausible given a lack of contact with other groups (mountaineous region). I'd sort of doubt cultural similarities would last that long in isolation, but the Kalash have such a distinct religion that makes me wonder.

The wikipedia talk page on the Kalash takes me head on into the first Alexander the Great contraversy I can't understand (I'm only the idiot reader as to the importance of this connection-- I can understand why it's interesting), the Macedonia/FYROM controversy. Sure enough, whenever the Kalash are discussed, the Macedonians and Greeks go at it in the forums.

I've never really understood the search for the lost tribes of Israel-- but I can also understand how if you're Pashtun or Ethiopian, having your family discovered and aided by a wealthy country is a plus. Therefore, I can understand part of why it's a powerful and contested identity struggle.

I like speculating about the waves of early human migration in a Kon-tiki kind of way, but I get nervous when origins are traced back to shadowy legendary events, like the Hamitic Myth in Rwanda. 19th century explorer John Speke postulated that the Tutsi were a superior invading class not-native to Rwanda descended from Noah's son Ham. This myth informed the entrenchment of an ethnic division under colonial rule. I also wonder if the poor treatment the Hazara in Afghanistan recieved under the Taliban was in part justified by the legend that they were descended from remnants of Gengis Khan's army, installed in Afghanistan through brutality.

But the birthplace and descendants of Alexander the Great? I'm struggling to understand even sinister or commercial explanations for why this is so contested. I'm the idiot reader.

Edit: Maybe it's about proving early "civilizedness," sort of like Afrocentrism and the split over Egypt? Gotta love conquering as a yardstick of advancement.