Writes Adam Kirsch, in "Reading Is a Vice/Being a reader means cultivating a relationship with the world that, by most standards, can seem pointless and counterproductive" (The Atlantic).
5 జనవరి, 2026
"It would be better to describe reading not as a public duty but as a private pleasure, sometimes even a vice."
"This would be a more effective way to attract young people, and it also happens to be true. When literature was considered transgressive, moralists couldn’t get people to stop buying and reading dangerous books. Now that books are considered virtuous and edifying, moralists can’t persuade anyone to pick one up.... [But reading] is an antisocial activity in the most concrete sense: To do it you have to be alone, or else pretend you’re alone by tuning out other people. Reading teaches you to be more interested in what’s going on inside your head than in the real world...."
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Writes Adam Kirsch, in "Reading Is a Vice/Being a reader means cultivating a relationship with the world that, by most standards, can seem pointless and counterproductive" (The Atlantic).
Well. I mean it is The Atlantic. It is written by dumb people and it is read by even dumber people.
Reading comprehension is the super power now. You can do anything if you know how to use words.
Unsurprisingly thats a stupid take
If a book is interesting of course i'll pick it up
As Father Ted would say "Down with this sort of thing!". The publishing world needs to hire some outraged clergy to protest against the latest literary offerings. Or whatever group currently stands in for the religious establishment, popstars perhaps?
How far are we from The Atlantic declaring that reading is white supremacy since black people can't do it?
Books bad (mongo says)
I couldn't give a fig what he thinks of reading. I have always, and always will, love to read.
some of these books are NAUGHTY!
i read this one. where after there city got destroyed in some sort of disaster; this guy's daughter was concerned about their ability to have kids..
SO, she got her dad drunk.. and You know?
*THEN! she talks her sister into doing THE SAME THING!!!
This is AFTER their dad told a gang a neighbors to YOU KNOW;
with the daughters, rather than having the gang annoy his guests..
*AND!
THESE people (the dad and and daughters, not the neighorhood gang) were SUPPOSED TO BE, the "good" people in town.
The rest of the neighhood folk were SO NAUGHTY, that they (somehow) Caused the disaster..
*AND* earlier in The Same Book; this boatbuilding guy got drunk and laid around the house NAKED, in front of his kids!
Anyway, i'm just saying that there are a LOT of Naughty stories in some of these books.. So, maybe reading IS a vice?
Don't take MY word for it! These books are (at least USED TO BE) at the local libraries! Sometimes with illustrations!!
ps. i think it was in the next book in the series, There were these OTHER daughters (daughter in laws? well SOMEONE'S Daughters), that did some surprizingly NAUGHTY things too!
(often with dads, or sometimes just strange guys that showed up in town one night)
Reading long form prose is a dying practice and I don't think anything can save it short a total collapse of civilization.
I believe it and i blame the publishers
In the world where mental illness is normalized, pick up a good book to tune out catty mom groups.
That's because the clowns at the Alantic have been pushing the nation to read pulp mulch crap for the last two decades.
And wasn't it the Atlantic and it's teacher union puppet masters who kept pushing for Genderqueer and additional child porn to minors in public schools?
The trash in elementary school libraries and this was a decade ago, is very distressing
I must have read that same book, Gilbar.
Except the part I read this dude was in his garden and his girlfriend did something wrong (I can't remember what) and they got evicted out of their place. Anyway, long story short, not only was the boyfriend banging her ... apparently their 2 kids were banging her also because nobody else was around at the time and you know ... a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Then one of her kids murdered the other one with a rock.
And here we are.
FormerLawClerk said...
..I must have read that same book, Gilbar..
later on, there's kinky foot fetish stuff too!
sometimes with expensive oils (sometimes not)
What's going on in my head IS the real world . . . my real world anyway.
People who talk like this really want to see the reading of NOVELS... serious novels. He talks about Proust and Flaubert. When he talks about reading, it's pretty clear that he means reading BOOKS. People read a lot on line. They read obsessively. But it doesn't count because it's not BOOKS. And even if it were books, it would need to be fiction. And not those genre books — romance, fantasy, sci-fi that people do still get excited about. He and people like him want a lot of young folks caught up in literary novels. But why? He's making the argument that reading serious literature is transgressive, and don't you want to do what's transgressive, kids? He doesn't examine his end — getting people excited about reading literary novels. But he thinks — probably from reading literary novels — that what spurs people to action is the call of transgression. It happened to Madame Bovary!
The 'reading is a vice' stuff would negate the 'well read' moniker as a sign of intellectualism. I suspect 'is a vice' rather more like the negatives you identify in yourself during job interviews...I'm too committed...I care too much...
"No girl was ever corrupted by a book." I thought that quote or something similar came from a distinguished jurist, but it was Jimmy Walker, NYC mayor in the 1920s.
If the young want transgression there are easier and more immediate ways of getting it. The kids who don't indulge are the ones who are reading the novels.
In the 18th century, novel reading was regarded as disreputable because it took people's minds off the real worls and encouraged daydreaming and woolgathering. Even then, Tom Jones wasn't reading novels, and novel readers rarely succeeded in becoming Fielding's Tom Jones.
Literary fiction has been gutted by do gooders, genre novels get a pass, these are novels where men can be men and women can be women, but it's OK, because "it's just fantasy" whereas in "Literary Fiction" characters could be arrested and banished by IRL morality police.
It's find in genre fiction if a man creates a zombie army by spraying a magic potion on cemeteries with ag. equipment that just rolls over tombstones, but if a man in a literary novel should have a non woke though? BannisssH HIIMMM!
If your novel can't get published until it passes muster with "sensitivity readers" it's not going to be transgressive, that's what's so great about the huge trove of literature that we have, but it's too bad that to apply the concepts to current events requires a supra rooma tempuratura IQ.
Ha ha, the very first thought that occurred to me was, 'what's wrong, nobody reading your book, Adam? You spent all that money getting it printed, didn't you?
What on earth is this guy talking about?
Reading is a required skill in the modern world. A person cannot hope to be reasonably successful without competent reading skills, except Adam Carolla.
Reading, as a pastime, or indulgence, only sharpens that skill. Some enjoy it, some do not.
I read veraciously as a child. My mother would catch me with books she had out from the library. Contemporary, adult fiction. She just gave me more.
I still love reading. But, I see Kirsch is a poet, something i don't really fancy. Good luck to him.
Althouse said…
When he talks about reading, it's pretty clear that he means reading BOOKS.
“Book ‘em Danno.”
The only decent poetry published in the past few decades, as far as I can see, is the stuff churned out by songwriters. I really liked reading Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, I really liked reading Wordsworth, and Yeats, and who is that guy who wrote Faust? But the current stuff is all self indulgent crap, especially the stuff written by women.
Oh I miss the wonderful stinger
of that man who left me
unable to share my honey
Can't even bring in a ringer
none compare
I sit and stare
at the laundry in the wringer.
OK, I just made that up, but it's not that different from a "poem" I reading the New Yorker about the time I gave up reading current poetry.
Ann Althouse said...
People who talk like this really want to see the reading of NOVELS... serious novels.
That's always irritated me. You're a 'reader' only if you read serious fiction and you're only a 'writer' if you write fiction.
No clearer indication of a group of people who have run out of things to talk about and ways to do so.
Well put.
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