A Reader’s Manifesto - Open The Magazine
openthemagazine.com
A Reader’s Manifesto - Open The Magazine
The cashier at the Union Square Barnes and Nobles told me that the essays books were on the 4th floor, but I didn't imagine how sparse the selection would be. I found 2 cases, 10 shelves total, something like 60 linear feat of essay book spines. I wondered if the 4th floor was a microcosm, and so I acted on my urge to count shelves to know precisel
... See moremean anything at all. On the front page of the gray old Times, I’m liable to encounter a chatty article about frying with propane gas. CNN lavished hours of airtime on a runaway bride. The magisterial tones of Walter Cronkite, America’s rich uncle, are lost to history, replaced by the ex-cheerleader mom style of Katie Couric. One reason the notion
... See moreI speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities
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