It is immensely amusing to read books for which one is not the intended audience. Often these books prove to be enjoyable on multiple levels. For one, there is the enjoyment of seeing someone write for someone else to see how they make their points, what they leave out (and assume their audience will know), and what language they use. It is especially useful to compare the writings of someone for one audience and their writings for another audience, as many writers tend to shade their writing based on their intended audience. There is a certain thrill, the thrill of reading what one is not “supposed” to be interested in, in reading such works and commenting on them, as if one is bringing to light what was intended to remain hidden from the general public.

There are several aspects that are particularly intriguing about reading unintended works. For one, authors are often far more honest about their feelings toward outsiders in writings with supposed friends than they are to writings to the outside world that may include those outsiders they secretly hate. On the other hand, some writers feel it necessary to adopt the language and worldview of a group to gain or maintain a vulnerable and threatened legitimacy. Every in-group has its own language and cliches, and communication between members of in-groups often reveals this language to other readers. While these cliches and inside references often are designed to make communication with outsiders off-putting, I find it enjoyable to understand the coded language of others and also do my best (as someone who generally writes to a wide potential audience) to avoid writing in the cliches and coded language of my own background, even if my writing and speaking is rather idiomatic.

Besides the language and tone, it is fascinating to read works for which one is not intended because one sees the level of assumed knowledge in the part of the audience. Obviously, there is a bit of a tension in the part of an author. The wider the intended audience, the lower the assumed knowledge. The smaller the intended audience, the greater the intended audience. It may be tempting to assume knowledge on the part of the audience to avoid having to explain something that seems basic to the author, but at the same time it is sometimes unwise to assume too much knowledge on the part of the reader if one wants a work to remain relevant outside of one’s narrow space and time. Whether the assumed knowledge is historical events that do not need to be mentioned in a certain audience, or are documents and people that are very well known and do not need to be mentioned specifically by name, it is often easy to determine whether one is in the “in crowd” or not when it comes to a particular work.

It does not bother me to be an outsider when it comes to examining works. I suppose I am used to being an outsider, so used that I have a hard time feeling like I belong. The relative comfort in being an outsider means that one can read and review works that are insider perspectives for others. This sort of information is akin to intelligence work, in seeing how others view the same problems and situations. This is particularly important in our age given the way that our information sources are so partisan and so heavily divided, such that we do not even have the same “facts” to work with. In such an environment it is vitally important to know the talking points that are in dispute between worldviews so that one can recognize when someone is simply reading off of a script, whether friendly or unfriendly to one’s own views, or has actually done independent research and analysis. It is a task of some importance to read “unintended” information at least sometimes to see where others are coming from, even if they are wrong.