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Alan Jacobs. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. New York: Oxford Press, 2011. 162 pp. $19.95, ISBN 9780199747498.
In Gary Shteyngart's near-future novel Super Sad True Love Story, a poignant scene occurs when forty-something Lenny tries to read a book to twenty-something Eunice, a college graduate with the most prestigious education of her day. Eunice, faced with a Milan Kundera tome, admits, "I never really learned to read texts. . . . Just to scan them for info."10 The fictional Eunice could well be part of the audience for Wheaton College English professor Alan Jacobs's slim, essayistic The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction: those who want to read well - and to enjoy doing it - but feel they have either lost the ability or never possessed it in the first place. The question is: would Eunice or her real-life counterparts be likely to pick up a book in order to restore or develop their pleasure in reading?
The first section of The Pleasures of Reading suggests a twin genesis for the concerns addressed within the book, neatly corresponding to the two halves of the title. First, Jacobs, declaring that "despite the lamentations of many contemporary Jeremiahs, the cause of reading is not a lost one by any means" (5), scorns formulaic, eat-y our- vegetables approaches to how and why people should read. To those vigilantes who would turn to Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren's classic How to Read a Book (rev. ed. 1972) for a solution to the supposed crisis of reading, Jacobs responds that "its strongly legislative tone is not suited to today's habits of mind" (8). The "aroma of Responsibility, Obligation, and Virtue emanating from" it will send "diffident readers, embarrassed non-readers, and guilt-stricken ex-readers" (12) fleeing for the creative comfort of Twitter, YouTube, and iPhone apps. Instead, Jacobs advises reading for pleasure, not governed by any "Books You Should Read to Be an Educated Person" list, but rather directed only by what he refers to as "Whim." While Jacobs rejects lowercase "whim" as "thoughtless, directionless preference that leads to boredom or frustration or both" (41), he celebrates uppercase "Whim" as a guide that, like the Swiss tutor who gave direction to a rudderless young...