Earnestness be gone

It is not hard to understand that writers are looking for serious readers. To be taken seriously and read carefully are of course the reward of all the hard work and sufferings. An indifferent reader renders the work trivial. This everyone can understand and expect. There is however a kind of serious readers that is worse than the indifferent: an earnest one. An earnest reader takes the work too seriously. He approaches reading without humour. Wit is incomprehensible to her. And subtleties? Well, it is not part of her dictionary. To him literal reading is not a part of reading but its entirety. Writers despise indifferent readers because they refuse to give the writing importance. They hate earnest reader because they take the words too seriously, so much so that the work becomes a humourless, witless, and shallow bore; just like the reader. You can bitterly complain that no one takes you seriously. But what can you do when you are taken seriously but completely wrongly? What if irony is taken straight? What if hyperbole is taken as factual? What if fiction is taken as real? All you can do is tell them they are wrong. But than, is it not what you have written? Is it not exactly what is on the page? Then what else can you say? Nothing. There is no defence against earnestness. Earnest readers are like zombies; they have no nervous system to feel pain and no brain to argue with. There is simply no deterrence. If god had really written the Bible, I have no doubt that he would hate fundamentalist more than other sinners, because fundamentalists treat god as a simpleton devoid of any literary skill and subtlety. I feel sorry for god, for being omnipotent but served by idiots.