{"id":52455,"date":"2018-10-24T07:39:08","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T12:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=52455"},"modified":"2018-10-24T07:39:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T12:39:08","slug":"living-among-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/living-among-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Living among books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Epstein on The Bookish Life<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Willa Cather, a writer I have come to admire as the greatest twentieth-century American novelist, chose not to allow any of her novels put into what she called \u201cschool editions,\u201d lest young students, having to read her under the duress of school assignments, never return to her books when they were truly ready for them. She was no dope, Miss Cather.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Twenty or so years ago there was a vogue for speed-reading. (\u201cI took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes,\u201d Woody Allen quipped. \u201cIt involves Russia.\u201d) But why, one wonders, would you wish to speed up an activity that gives pleasure? Speed-reading? I\u2019d as soon take a course in speed-eating or speed-lovemaking. Yet the notion of speed generally hovers over the act of reading. \u201cA real page-turner,\u201d people say of certain novels or biographies. I prefer to read books that are page-stoppers, that cause me to stop and contemplate a striking idea, an elegant phrase, an admirably constructed sentence.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the risky generalization department, slow readers tend to be better readers\u2014more careful, more critical, more thoughtful. I myself rarely read more than twenty-five or thirty pages of a serious book in a single sitting. Reading a novel by Thomas Mann, a short story by Chekhov, a historical work by \u00adTheodor Mommsen, essays by Max Beerbohm, why would I wish to rush through them? Savoring them seems more sensible. After all, you never know when you will pass this way again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThe art of not reading is a very important one,\u201d Schopenhauer wrote.<\/p>\n

It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Epstein on The Bookish Life: Willa Cather, a writer I have come to admire as the greatest twentieth-century American novelist, chose not to allow any of her novels put into what she called \u201cschool editions,\u201d lest young students, having to read her under the duress of school assignments, never return to her books when … Continue reading “Living among books”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-anti-culture","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-dE3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52455"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52476,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52455\/revisions\/52476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}