INTRODUCTION

Read Less, More TV: A Cranky, Slightly Rude Introduction

Henry Jacoby

 

 

 

Dr. Gregory House, that brilliant pill-popping bastard, limps along the halls of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, knocking aside medical ethics with a wave of his cane. He tells us that everybody lies, that humanity is overrated, and that it’s the nature of medicine that you’re going to screw up. And one more thing: Read less, more TV! Yeah, House says that, too. But he wasn’t talking about this book. You really should read this book, the one you’re now holding in your hands. House would want you to.

But why should we listen to him? Isn’t he a jerk? Well, yes, but unlike the guy standing next to you reading the book on intelligent design, House is cool. House plays a mean guitar and a killer piano, and chicks think he’s sexy (it’s the blue eyes). He even had a pet rat named Steve McQueen—how cool is that? And one more thing: he’s brilliant. So who cares if he thinks that seizures are fun to watch but boring to diagnose? What’s not to love?

I love House, and so do the contributors to this volume. Humanity may in fact be overrated, but not this bunch! I never once thought about firing them all and holding auditions for a new team. But more on them in a minute (they can wait, just like the clinic patients House ignores). Let’s get back to the “What’s not to love?” question.

Have I forgotten about the rudeness and the way House ridicules everyone else’s ideas? (I tried that, by the way. I thought maybe I’d be branded an eccentric genius and be paid accordingly. It didn’t work.) Have I forgotten that he’s a drug addict? Have I forgotten that he once asked if it was still illegal to perform an autopsy on a living person? No, I haven’t forgotten these things, but remember, he also saves lives. As Dr. Cuddy pointed out to that nasty Tritter fellow, he saves a lot more lives than he loses.

Like Socrates and Sherlock Holmes, House is intrigued by puzzles. His stubborn, relentless desire for the truth combined with his extraordinary reasoning skills means that the puzzles get solved, while the lives get saved. Hospital rules be damned!

Speaking of reasoning and truth, House has a lot to say about philosophy as well. And isn’t it time that I got around to the philosophy part of House and Philosophy anyway? For House, Occam’s Razor holds that the simplest explanation is that almost always somebody screwed up. How about reality? Philosophers argue a lot about that. House says that reality is almost always wrong. And the Socratic method! He loves that. He says it’s the best way we have of teaching everything apart from juggling chainsaws.

The contributors to this volume (it’s time to talk about them; they’re not clinic patients, after all), just like House’s team, are first-rate. They expertly expand on House’s insights and examine his character. It’s all in this book: Sartre and Nietzsche, Socrates and Aristotle, logic and luck, love and friendship, and even Zen. Some of it is pretty weird, really, but I like it. As House says, weird works for me. Now, bring me the thong of Lisa Cuddy!