“This laborious sort of misreading is perhaps especially prevalent in our own age. One sad result of making English literature a ‘subject’ at schools and universities is that the reading of great authors is, from early years, stamped upon the minds of conscientious and submissive young people as something meritorious. When the young person in question is an agnostic whose ancestors were Puritans, you get a very regrettable state of mind. The Puritan conscience works on without the Puritan theology—like millstones grinding nothing; like digestive juices working on an empty stomach and producing ulcers. The unhappy youth applies to literature all the scruples, the rigorism, the self-examination, the distrust of pleasure, which his forbears applied to the spiritual life; and perhaps soon all the intolerance and self-righteousness.”
I have been reading books for literal decades at this point of my life. Compared to many others, I read easily, well, and very fast. So it is always a really fun moment when I discover someone who can tell me some new things about how to read, and how to think about reading. This book is one of those.
Get it. Read it.
