I thought Ms. Wharton was being a little unfair to Dr. Samuel Johnson on p.4 when she implied that he was one of those mechanical readers who insisted on reading books thoroughly. In actual fact, this was far from the case. I recall a scene from James Boswell's "Life of Johnson" in which Boswell asked Johnson about his reading habits. Johnson said that books were like people, and that you shouldn't feel obliged to read every word of a book any more than you should interrogate a new friend to extract every bit of information about their personal history.
Boswell described another occasion when he was visiting Johnson at his home and started idly browsing through his bookshelves. Boswell was surprised to find that some of the books Johnson claimed to have read didn't have their pages cut, so that Johnson could only have read a portion of the book. When asked about this, I think Johnson only replied to Boswell something to the effect that he should really stop obsessing about books as something to be completely devoured.
I had to read your subtitle several times before I realized it said, “Why should we all be readers?” instead of, “Why we should all be readers.” The wording of the second version was more compatible with the meaning that my brain would normally have extracted from those six words strung together, so I had to work a little harder to perceive what you had actually written. Or more accurately, what Edith Wharton had written, as I later realized that you had selected a quote from page 2 of her essay, “The Vice of Reading”.
It occurred to me that reading may have been more important as a form of entertainment in 1903 than it is today. I’m not sure if there’s any way of making a comparison, but it just seems to me that the people who would have read Edith’s essay when it was first published wouldn’t have been faced with any competition for their attention from radio, television, the movies, or the internet.
I just realized this morning that Virginia Woolf was born twenty years and one day after Edith Wharton on January 25, 1882.
I thought Ms. Wharton was being a little unfair to Dr. Samuel Johnson on p.4 when she implied that he was one of those mechanical readers who insisted on reading books thoroughly. In actual fact, this was far from the case. I recall a scene from James Boswell's "Life of Johnson" in which Boswell asked Johnson about his reading habits. Johnson said that books were like people, and that you shouldn't feel obliged to read every word of a book any more than you should interrogate a new friend to extract every bit of information about their personal history.
Boswell described another occasion when he was visiting Johnson at his home and started idly browsing through his bookshelves. Boswell was surprised to find that some of the books Johnson claimed to have read didn't have their pages cut, so that Johnson could only have read a portion of the book. When asked about this, I think Johnson only replied to Boswell something to the effect that he should really stop obsessing about books as something to be completely devoured.
I had to read your subtitle several times before I realized it said, “Why should we all be readers?” instead of, “Why we should all be readers.” The wording of the second version was more compatible with the meaning that my brain would normally have extracted from those six words strung together, so I had to work a little harder to perceive what you had actually written. Or more accurately, what Edith Wharton had written, as I later realized that you had selected a quote from page 2 of her essay, “The Vice of Reading”.
It occurred to me that reading may have been more important as a form of entertainment in 1903 than it is today. I’m not sure if there’s any way of making a comparison, but it just seems to me that the people who would have read Edith’s essay when it was first published wouldn’t have been faced with any competition for their attention from radio, television, the movies, or the internet.
I finished The House of Mirth this morning. I simply couldn't leave Lily alone this week.
I love her
Happy Birthday, Edith! That's sure a whole heap of candles to blow out!