People Who Don't Read Books
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Out of curiosity, what is your opinion on reading books?
The article is congratulatory. But I think it's proxying for intellectual curiosity and attention span.
> What an incomprehensible sentence
Is it the vocabulary? Because it's a grammatically-simple sentence.
> is it the vocabulary? Because it’s a grammatically-simple sentence.
Yes, the vocabulary. Throwing a bunch of low-frequency words together doesn’t make a sentence more refined or its content more insightful. It’s just pomp, really.
As someone else mentioned, yes this is an ad hominem attack (although, maybe this is forgivable insofar as I’m calling out hypocrisy and claiming he’s in no place to put down other people - which I believe is the sole purpose of the article. If it’s just to say that reading is good, well, uh, duh. No need for a whole article about the benefits of education.)
The author balanced this by clarifying that it "is one thing in practice not to read books, or not to read them as much as one might wish. But it is something else entirely to despise the act in principle."
> it’s just to say that reading is good, well, uh, duh
Did we read the same article?
It's pointing out that folks who virtue signal about not reading are raising a red flag. It's not disparaging people who don't read, but who publicly praise themselves for not reading and go on to denigrate those who do.
If the article is simply an appeal to common sense, or an effort to convince others to educate themselves, maybe there are better ways to get the message across than regurgitating five hundred words on theAtlantic.com. They publish this stuff for their self-conscious “literati” audience to eat up.
The millions of readers of his congratulatory profiles. (Like the one TFA cites.) Including still-influential figures like Marc Andreessen.
> maybe there are better ways to get the message across than regurgitating five hundred words on theAtlantic.com. They publish this stuff for their self-conscious “literati” audience to eat up.
It sounds like you would have had an axe to grind with the article irrespective of its contents. Maybe that's worth exploring on your own time.
That being said, I’m not sure rejecting all books is particularly widespread so it does feel a bit like preaching to the choir and like sycamoretrees mentioned, letting Atlantic readers feel superior.