Print Recommendation

This month’s Harper’s not only features three pages of something new “in progress” by David Foster Wallace, but also a small, enjoyable piece by Ursula le Guin about the state of reading in this country. She makes the case, first of all, that the gloom-and-doom people that you hear every month or so on NPR bemoaning the lack of reading in this world are wrong; compared to almost any other time in history, our literacy is ok. It is only the freakish, overachieving century between 1850 and 1950 that’s making us look bad: that was the century of the book, when, as she and the Dudebrodogman independently point out, eager New Yorkers herded around ships from Britain wanting to know what had happened in the latest Dickens installment. We are not up to that level. But we are not so bad.

The rest of the essay, which I am recommending wholeheartedly, includes a discussion of the physical, printed nature of books; several snarky and hilarious comments about the stupidity of outfits that treat books like commodities (with at least one of which outfits I have some familiarity); and a brief comment on why electronic books will not take off. All things close to my much-vaunted and ballyhooed "concerns" about the status of reading, that I mentioned in the last post. I started out writing more about this essay, but it was mostly summary peppered with out-of-order quotes, and was kind of lame. But the essay is good, and out now, and comes with some David Foster Wallace writing, so go for it.

That, and my mother and aunts keep asking about the blog, and I felt bad-ish sending them to one whose first post was on dirty words. Can anyone else tell based on how concerned I am about those words that I went to catholic school? This is the last you'll hear about them, I promise. More on Atonement, and the announcement of the next pick, later in the week.