Minority Report (7). HL Mencken

Minority Report: HL Mencken’s Notebooks (7). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1956.

Why read it? One of the most celebrated curmudgeons in American history. Mencken writes in half-truths. He’s half wrong, but he is also half right. His style jolts the reader. He will make you think. The topics are random, from a collection of ideas that had gathered dust over the years but which he had never developed into full-blown essays. Reading these quotes again, I am thinking of the irreverence of the television show, All in the Family. Mencken might be a great Archie Bunker, if Archie Bunker could write.

Sample quotes and ideas:

“The human race, taking one day with another, has very little respect for intelligence; what it really admires is presumption, effrontery, dogmatism.” p. 134.

“There seems to be a deep instinct in women which teaches them that most of the aspirations of men are vain.” p. 139.

“Progress…is almost always attained at the cost of human happiness.” p. 139.

Democracy: “…the heavy stressing of self-reliance, the doctrine of equality before the law, government by laws, not men, the insistence upon free competition.” p. 139.

“It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him.” p. 141.

“All social organizations have the common end of making the joiner feel important, and, in some way or other, powerful.” p. 143.

“…the American people have been bolstering up its government’s powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs…paying for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties.” p. 143.

“The idea at the bottom of the Christian Eucharist is precisely the idea at the bottom of cannibalism. The devotee believes that he will acquire something of the psychological quality of the creature by devouring its body.” p. 148.

“The politician is the most transient of the world’s great men. Who knows who was Speaker of the House under Hayes?” p. 149.

“One of the most amusing by-products of war is its pricking of the fundamental democratic delusion…his God-given rights, his inalienable freedom, his sublime equality to his masters…. Of a sudden he is thrust into a training camp, and discovers that he is a slave after all—that even his life is not his own.” p. 150.

To be continued.

Minority Report (6). HL Mencken.

Minority Report: HL Mencken’s Notebooks (6). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1956.

Why read it? One of the most celebrated curmudgeons in American history. Mencken writes in half-truths. He’s half wrong, but he is also half right. His style jolts the reader. He will make you think. The topics are random, from a collection of ideas that had gathered dust over the years but which he had never developed into full-blown essays. Reading these quotes again, I am thinking of the irreverence of the television show, All in the Family. Mencken might be a great Archie Bunker, if Archie Bunker could write.

Sample quotes and ideas:

“The thirst for liberty does not seem to be natural to man: most people want security in this world, not liberty.” p. 123.

“Scratch the average American and you find a Puritan.” p. 125.

“All the leaders of groups tend to be frauds.” p. 125.

“Of all the classes of men, I dislike most those who make their living by talking—actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on.” p. 126.

“I was always sorry for such men [talkers], for I soon observed that the applause of today was almost invariably followed by the indifference of tomorrow.” p. 126.

“The critic challenges other men’s work and is exposed to no comparable challenge of his own.” p. 129.

“The human race has probably never produced a wholly admirable man.” p. 130.

“A woman of the highest order of intelligence, entering into the sciences, or into commerce or manufacturing, always finds herself subordinate to some man, and it is not infrequently happens that he is her inferior on all rational counts.” p. 131.

“What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? …he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.” p. 132.

“…a physician…is one who spends his whole life trying to prolong the lives of persons whose deaths, in nine cases out of ten, would be a public benefit.” p. 132.

“Whenever a given school system turns out to be relatively rational and effective, no one remembers the school ma’ams who make it so, for all the credit and glory are hogged by the super-gogues at the head of it.” p. 133.

“…when another school system is discovered to be…ineffective the blame is heaped on the school ma’ams, and the super-gogues proceed to supplant them with others trained in some new abracadabra.” p. 133.

“The super-gogues have incommoded the schoolma’am much more than they have aided her, and when she succeeds at her dismal task it is usually in spite of them, not because of them.” p. 133.

“On some bright tomorrow, so I hope and pray, someone will write a history of common sense.” p. 133.

To be continued.

Minority Report (5). HL Mencken

Minority Report: HL Mencken’s Notebooks (5). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1956.

Why read it? One of the most celebrated curmudgeons in American history. Mencken writes in half-truths. He’s half wrong, but he is also half right. His style jolts the reader. He will make you think. The topics are random, from a collection of ideas that had gathered dust over the years but which he had never developed into full-blown essays. Reading these quotes again, I am thinking of the irreverence of the television show, All in the Family. Mencken might be a great Archie Bunker, if Archie Bunker could write.

Sample quotes and ideas:

“The medical specialist is simply a man who has seen the situation now confronting him a great many times, and is familiar with its variations.” p. 86.

“In case of murder I think it should be written into the law that no murderer, under any circumstances, whatever, shall ever be released until his victim’s natural expectation of life has expired…no reason that I can imagine why he should enjoy liberty while that victim is deprived of life.” p. 92.

“The believing g mind is eternally impervious to evidence.” p. 96.

“A professor, even at his best, is a pedagogue, and a pedagogue is seldom much of a man.” p. 102.

“The belief that man is immortal is a vestige of the childish egoism which once made him believe that the earth is the center of the solar system.” p. 107.

“The objection to war is not that it endangers human life, but that it destroys human dignity.” p. 110.

“Of all varieties of men, the one who is least comprehensible to me is…the reformer, the uplifter, the man, so-called, of public spirit. I am chiefly unable to understand…his oafish certainty that he is right—his almost pathological inability to grasp the notion that, after all, he may be wrong.” p. 113.

“Anything is conceivable in a world so irrational as this one.” p. 113.

“Actually, altruism simply does not exist on earth: even the most devoted nun, laboring all her life in the hospitals, is sustained by the promise of a stupendous reward…billions of centuries of indescribable bliss for a few years of unpleasant but certainly not unendurable drudgery and privation.” p. 114.

“Ideas of duty are mainly only afterthoughts.” p. 118.

“The charm of the Confederates [in the Civil War] lies in the fact that they fought against heavy odds and carried on for four years a war that was hopeless before the end of its first.” p. 120.

“Of all human qualities, the one I admire most is competence.” p. 120.

“…my contempt for teachers of English: Not one in ten of them has any sort of grasp of the difficult subject he professes, or shows any desire to master it.” p. 120.

“The teacher of English …can… outfit himself for his career by reading a few plays of Shakespeare, memorizing the rules of grammar laid down by idiots, and learning to pronounce either as if it were spelled eyether.” p. 121.

To be continued.

Minority Report (4). HL Mencken

Minority Report: HL Mencken’s Notebooks (4). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1956.

Why read it? One of the most celebrated curmudgeons in American history. Mencken writes in half-truths. He’s half wrong, but he is also half right. His style jolts the reader. He will make you think. The topics are random, from a collection of ideas that had gathered dust over the years but which he had never developed into full-blown essays. Reading these quotes again, I am thinking of the irreverence of the television show, All in the Family. Mencken might be a great Archie Bunker, if Archie Bunker could write.

Sample quotes and ideas:

“Human beings never welcome the news that something they have long cherished is untrue: they almost always reply to that news by reviling its promulgator.” p. 65.

“It was not until skepticism arose in the world that genuine intelligence dawned.” p. 67.

“People soon find by experience that the ecstasy of sex, like any other powerful emotion, is self-limiting, and that after it has passed off they are substantially unchanged.” p. 68.

“…the average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it.” p. 70.

“The relativity of moral ideas is proved anew every time there is a war.” p. 72.

“Men are the only animals who devote themselves assiduously to making one another unhappy.” p. 76.

“There are Englishmen, of course, who pretend to friendliness for the United States, but it always turns out on brief investigation, that they are trying to sell something.” p. 76.

“The only cure for contempt is countercontempt.” p. 77.

“Every rebel believes that he is bringing in a new day that will last.” p. 78.

“The literature of the world is not written by…joiners.” p. 80.

“Literature is the exclusive product of independent men" [and women].

“Can the United States ever become genuinely civilized?” p. 81.

To be continued.

Minority Report (3). Mencken.

Minority Report: HL Mencken’s Notebooks (3). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1956.

Why read it? One of the most celebrated curmudgeons in American history. Mencken writes in half-truths. He’s half wrong, but he is also half right. His style jolts the reader. He will make you think. The topics are random, from a collection of ideas that had gathered dust over the years but which he had never developed into full-blown essays. Reading these quotes again, I am thinking of the irreverence of the television show, All in the Family. Mencken might be a great Archie Bunker, if Archie Bunker could write.

Sample quotes and ideas:

“The whole process [trial, conviction, sentencing and execution] should be shortened to bring crime and punishment close together.” p. 31.

“As things stand, the spread between [conviction, sentencing and execution] is so great that by the time the criminal comes to the chair the crime is forgotten and all we see is a poor fish making a tremendous (and sometimes even gallant) effort to save his life, with all sorts of shyster lawyers and do-gooders as assistant-heroes.” p. 31.

“One of the strangest delusions of the Western mind is to the effect that a philosophy of profound wisdom is on tap in the East.” p. 36.

“The existence of most human beings is of absolutely no significance to history or to human progress.” p. 39.

“Most human beings live and die as anonymously and as nearly uselessly as so many bullfrogs or houseflies.” p. 39.

“…for it becomes manifest that the United States, which escaped unscathed from both wars, will have to destroy deliberately much of the sort of property that was destroyed in Europe and Asia by military vandalism…. Its plants will need modernizing to meet the competition of the new plants built to replace the war’s ruins.” p. 44.

“Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses.” p. 47.

“Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses.” p. 48. [Substitute for “philosophy” any professional or educator. RayS.]

“It is impossible to hang the average murderer until he has killed at least a dozen people.” p. 53.

“Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man….” p. 57.

“It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.” p. 63.

“It may be, indeed, that the artistic impulse is simply a kind of disgust with things as they are.” p. 64.

To be continued.

Minority Report (2). HL Mencken

Minority Report: HL Mencken’s Notebooks (2). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1956.

Why read it? One of the most celebrated curmudgeons in American history. Mencken writes in half-truths. He’s half wrong, but he is also half right. His style jolts the reader. He will make you think. The topics are random, from a collection of ideas that had gathered dust over the years but which he had never developed into full-blown essays. Reading these quotes again, I am thinking of the irreverence of the television show, All in the Family. Mencken might be a great Archie Bunker, if Archie Bunker could write.

Sample quotes and ideas:

“Into those writings, if he lives long enough, he [the writer] gradually empties all his fears and hatreds and prejudices—all his vain regrets and broken hopes—all his sufferings as a man, and all the special sufferings that go with his trade.” p. 20.

“The essential difficulty of pedagogy lies in the impossibility of inducing a sufficiency of superior men and women to become pedagogues.” p. 20.

“…even in the best society, manners are immensely important.” p. 21.

“All poetry is simply an escape from reality.” p. 22.

“The five-day week…has given…more time to listen to the radio and look at movies. No sign whatever that any considerable number of the underprivileged have put their new leisure to profitable use. Just as stupid as they were before they had it. Some reason to believe that they are more stupid.” p. 22.

“It seems to be inevitable for all men, after they are put in positions of authority, to exercise it in a brutal and inequitable manner.” p. 23.

“The moral bully is the worst of all; Puritanism is completely merciless.” p. 23.

“…men delight in work because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done…offers an escape from boredom…. Nothing is harder to do than nothing.” p. 24.

“God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable; God will set them above their betters.” p. 24.

“…what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.” p. 25.

“The Russian system collides with certain irremovable facts of human nature.” p. 26.

“The exercise of free speech must inevitably benefit fools quite as much as sensible men….” p. 27.

“[Intellectuals] believed as a cardinal article of faith that there was a remedy at hand for every conceivable public ill….”p. 28.

To be continued.

Minority Report (1). Mencken.

Minority Report: HL Mencken’s Notebooks (1). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1956.

Why read it? One of the most celebrated curmudgeons in American history. Mencken writes in half-truths. He’s half wrong, but he is also half right. His style jolts the reader. He will make you think. The topics are random, from a collection of ideas that had gathered dust over the years but which he had never developed into full-blown essays. Reading these quotes again, I am thinking of the irreverence of the television show, All in the Family. Mencken might be a great Archie Bunker, if Archie Bunker could write.

Sample quotes and ideas:

“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.” p. 3.

“A dull, dark depressing day in winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.” p. 3.

“The astounding thing about marriage is not that it so often goes to smash, but that it so often endures.” p. 3.

[In favor of sterilization of criminals]: “Even if it is argued that their criminality is thus the product of environment rather than of heredity, it follows that the environment they themselves provide for children is very likely to produce more criminals.” p. 7.

“What they [average people] mistake for thought is simply repetition of what they have heard.” p. 10.

“Human life is basically a comedy.” p. 11.

“To fight seems to be as natural to man as to eat.” p. 12.

“It is what men esteem that determines their conduct.” p. 15.

“No one can ever really avoid [doing] what he holds to be evil.” p. 17.

“The Catholic is fortunate in the fact that the sinner can go to a priest and get rid of his sense of guilt.” p. 17.

“…the only sort of man who is really worth while…the man who practices some useful trade in a competent manner, makes a decent living at it, pays his own way and asks only to be let alone.” p. 17.

“[The writer] must plod his way through many days when writing is impossible altogether—days of doldrums, of dead centers, of utter mental collapse.” p. 19.

To be continued.

Utopia (4). Sir Thomas More. Conclusion.

1516. Trans. Peter K. Marshall. New York: Washington Square Press. 1965.

Why read it? Sir Thomas More wrote his fictional account of Utopia to demonstrate that the cure for all social evil—poverty, oppression, violence, cruelty, exploitation—is in abolishing private property. Eliminate private property, he said, and you eliminate social subordination and all of the evils that accompany it. And he describes Utopia as a place where private property has been eliminated.

Sample ideas and quotes:

Utopia

Utopia: “But out of the gold and silver…they make chamber pots and all the most humble utensils.”

“Utopians…are amazed that any man can be pleased with the feeble glow of a little gem or stone, when he can gaze at a star and the very sun itself.” p. 69.

“Utopians…are also amazed that gold, of its own nature so useless, is now everywhere so highly valued that man himself, through whom and for whose use it gained its worth, is valued much less than gold itself.” p. 70.

Utopia: “For it [their language] has a rich vocabulary, a pleasant sound, and is an unsurpassed vehicle for expressing feelings.” p. 71.

“…she [Nature] repeatedly exhorts you to see to it that you do not follow your own advantages to the extent of producing disadvantages for others.” p. 74.

The Utopians on hunting: “But if you are held by the hope of slaughter and the expectation of seeing something torn to pieces before your eyes, it ought rather to move you to pity to see a little hare so weak, shy and harmless torn apart by a powerful, fierce and cruel dog…. The Utopians delegate this practice of hunting, as something unworthy of free men, to butchers….” p. 78.

The Utopians on hunting: “…the hunter seeks nothing but pleasure from the slaughter and dismembering of a poor little animal…. The constant experience of so savage a pleasure turns into cruelty.” p. 78.

“Almost all the Utopians claim that bodily health is a great pleasure, the foundation and basis of all others; for even alone it can produce a calm and delightful state of life.” p. 80.

“I have promised to tell you of their [Utopians’] practices, not defend them.” p. 83.

Utopia: “But usually the most serious crimes are punished with slavery…. They think this just as unpleasant for the criminals and more profitable for the state than if they hurried to execute the guilty and do away with them immediately. Their work brings more profit than their death.” p. 91.

“They [the Utopians] do not merely deter people from crimes by punishment; they also set up rewards to incite them to virtue.” p. 92.

“…they [the Utopians] exclude absolutely all lawyers since these plead cases with cunning and slyly dispute the laws. They think it is useful that each man should plead his own case. In Utopia every man has a good knowledge of law.” p. 93.

Utopia. “But by far the largest section of the population, and the wisest, too…thinks that there is a certain single divinity, unknown, eternal, boundless, inexplicable, beyond the understanding of the human mind, diffused through the whole of this universe in virtue, not bulk.” p. 108.

Comment: Think of the influence this book has had on society, the number of societies that have sprung up with the Utopian ideal of banishing private property and establishing communal effort and equal sharing of the rewards. Of course, these societies all fail because human nature is competitive, grasping, worshipping power and determined for personal success. I guess, from the Christian point of view, human nature is as it is because of Original Sin and the loss of Paradise. RayS.

Utopia (3). Sir Thomas More.

1516. Trans. Peter K. Marshall. New York: Washington Square Press. 1965.

Why read it? Sir Thomas More wrote his fictional account of Utopia to demonstrate that the cure for all social evil—poverty, oppression, violence, cruelty, exploitation—is in abolishing private property. Eliminate private property, he said, and you eliminate social subordination and all of the evils that accompany it. And he describes Utopia as a place where private property has been eliminated.

Sample ideas and quotes:

Utopia

“…I think that wherever there are private possessions, where everything is measured by money, there a state can scarcely ever be justly and successfully managed—unless you think that is justice where all the best things come to the worst men, or that is success where everything is divided among a very few.” p. 37.

“So I think over the wise and holy customs of the Utopians, who need so few laws for government…then I compare and contrast…so many other nations, always making laws…countless laws passed every day.” p. 37.

“For where each man by fixed titles appropriates as much as he can, a few share out all the wealth and leave poverty for the rest.” p. 37.

“For the rich are greedy, wicked and useless…. So I am quite convinced that things cannot be distributed in equity and justice, nor mortals’ affairs be managed prosperously, unless private ownership is totally abolished.” p. 38.

Utopia: “The Senate has the practice of debating nothing on the first day it is proposed to them….to prevent someone from babbling the first thing that comes into his head, and then from a perverse and unnatural fear of seeming to have been short-sighted in the beginning, thinking up arguments to defend his plan rather than consulting the interests of the state, ready to damage the public good rather than his own reputation.” p. 50. [The Senate never debates any issue on the first day because someone will babble some nonsense about it and then feel he has to defend his babbling.]

Utopia: “All the men and women have one occupation in common—agriculture, in which everyone is skilled.... Besides agriculture, each man is taught one occupation as his own specialty.” p. 51.

Utopia: “Throughout the island there is only one style of clothing, except that one sex is distinguished from another and unmarried from married people by their dress.” p. 51.

Utopia: “…that as far as necessity allows, all citizens should be given as much time as possible away from bodily service for the freedom and cultivation of the mind…. There, they think, lies happiness in life.” p. 56.

Utopia: “Wives serve their husbands, children their parents, and, in short, the younger serve the older.” p. 58.

Utopia: “For they do not allow their own citizens to grow accustomed to the slaughter of animals, as they think that constant practice in this gradually destroys the kindness and gentle feeling of our souls.” p. 59.

To be continued.

Utopia (2). Sir Thomas More.

1516. Trans. Peter K. Marshall. New York: Washington Square Press. 1965.

Why read it? Sir Thomas More wrote his fictional account of Utopia to demonstrate that the cure for all social evil—poverty, oppression, violence, cruelty, exploitation—is in abolishing private property. Eliminate private property, he said, and you eliminate social subordination and all of the evils that accompany it. And he describes Utopia as a place where private property has been eliminated.

Sample ideas and quotes:

The State of England in Thomas More’s Time:

“…practically all princes…take greater delight in spending their time on military pursuits than on the good arts of peace…are much more concerned how to get new kingdoms for themselves, by fair means or foul, than to administer well what they already have.” p. 8.

“…he began loudly to sing the praises of that stern justice which was then being used in England against thieves, who, he said, were strung up everywhere, sometimes twenty on one gallows…. He said he was all the more puzzled, when so few escaped punishment, what evil fate produced so many robbers all over the country.” p. 10.

“…a good part of this world…seems to copy bad teachers, who more readily beat their students than educate them.” p. 10.

“For harsh and terrible punishments are inflicted upon thieves, when it would be much better to see that they had a means to earn a living…freed from the awful necessity of stealing and then being put to death.” p. 11.

“The result of a standing army is that they even have to seek out a war so as not to have unskilled soldiers, and wantonly to kill men so that…their hands or spirits may not grow dull through lack of practice.” p. 12.

“…the same lesson is shown by the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Syrians…their standing armies on various pretexts have overthrown their empires, and ravaged their country and cities.” p. 12.

“The Aristocrats are not satisfied to live in luxury and be of no use to the state…leave nothing for arable land, enclose everything for pasture…. One shepherd or attendant is enough to graze the land with cattle, although formerly many hands were needed to cultivate it so as to ensure a good harvest.” p. 14.

“Now beside this wretched poverty and need we find wanton luxury.” p. 16.

“When you allow people to be brought up in the worst possible way and their characters to be gradually corrupted from a tender age, and then punish them when they commit these crimes as men which they showed all signs of doing from their childhood on—I ask you, what else are you doing than making men thieves and then punishing them?” p. 17.

“For when a robber sees that no less a danger awaits a man condemned for theft than one convicted of homicide as well, by this single thought he is driven to murder the man he would otherwise merely have robbed.” p. 19.

“…Plato judges that states will become blessed only if philosophers become kings or kings philosophers.” p. 27.

“…I think that wherever there are private possessions, where everything is measured by money, there a state can scarcely ever be justly and successfully managed—unless you think that is justice where all the best things come to the worst men, or that is success where everything is divided among a very few.” p. 37.

To be continued.

Utopia (1). Sir Thomas More.

1516. Trans. Peter K. Marshall. New York: Washington Square Press. 1965.

Why read it? Sir Thomas More wrote his fictional account of Utopia to demonstrate that the cure for all social evil—poverty, oppression, violence, cruelty, exploitation—is in abolishing private property. Eliminate private property, he said, and you eliminate social subordination and all of the evils that accompany it. And he describes Utopia as a place where private property has been eliminated.

Sample ideas and quotes:

“Sixteenth-century society to a sensitive observer presented shocking contrasts between the driving greed and luxury of the rich and the misery and oppression of the poor.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. viii.

“As the name ‘humanism’ implies, the central reason for humanist activity was a passionate concern with the human condition a passionate dedication to the improvement of human life and to the emancipation of man.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. viii.

“At the dawn of the modern world, social science made its appearance in England not as the designated discipline of pedants seeking knowledge for its own sake but…for the elevation and emancipation of mankind, for the eradication of cruelty, exploitation, and illiteracy.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. viii.

“…a monarch’s main concern ought to be the welfare of his subjects.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. ix.

“Sir Thomas More proclaimed the equality of the sexes, at least insofar as education was concerned, in a society where woman was allotted a subordinate role.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. x.

“Utopia was written in Latin and addressed…to a limited circle of scholars, clerks and statesmen.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. xii.

“Leisure is distinguished from idleness; the Utopians have a passion for learning and self-improvement, and they believe that leisure must be used for the cultivation of the mind.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. xv.

“It was…Sir Thomas More’s greatness to grasp the causal connection between the institution of private property and the poverty, violence and oppression to which humanity was subjected.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. xvii.

Father Surtz: “The ideal Christian Utopia must wait until men become ideal Christians.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. xxii.

“Sir Thomas More is saying that private property in any form establishes the roots and the foundation of pride, acquisitiveness and the destruction of human brotherhood; abolish private property, he says, and you eliminate the fundamental condition that generates pride and its various forms in violence, hatred, injustice, oppression and war.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. xxiii.

“Looking about them, the humanists saw a society dominated by the fever of private acquisition, a society in which men…were divided into rulers and ruled, oppressors and oppressed, rich and poor.” Introd. John Anthony Scott. p. xxv.

To be continued.

A History of Reading (5)

Alberto Manguel. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc. 1996.

Why read it? Do you have questions about reading? You read. But do you think about the process of reading? Is the way you read the way everybody else reads? How has reading changed over the years? This book is, in a sense, the author’s autobiographical account of his reading and an historical account of the development of reading. In explaining his experience of reading, he answers other readers’ questions about their reading. He provides a number of interesting thoughts about the nature of reading.

Sample quotes and ideas:

“…no reading can ever be definitive.” p. 173.

“…the magnificent purpose of the [Alexandria] Library was to encapsulate the totality of human knowledge.” p. 189.

“The accumulation of knowledge isn’t knowledge.” p. 190.

A single book can be placed in many different categories: “Filed under fiction, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a humorous novel of adventure; under sociology, a satirical study of England in the eighteenth century; under children’s literature, an entertaining fable about dwarfs and giants and talking horses; under fantasy, a precursor of science fiction; under travel, an imaginary voyage; under classics, a part of the Western literary canon.” p. 199.

“In Saint Bernadine’s view, education was the dangerous result of, and the cause of, more curiosity.” p. 218.

“I enjoy the sight of my crowded bookshelves… I delight in knowing that I’m surrounded by a sort of inventory of my life.” p. 237.

“Writing to his wife, Catherine, about reading his second Christmas story, ‘The Chimes,’ he [Dickens] exulted, ‘If you had seen Macready [one of Dickens’s friends] last night—undisguisedly sobbing, and crying on the sofa, as I read—You would have felt as I did what a thing it is to have power.’ ” p. 256.

“Like every reader, Rilke was also reading through his own experience.” p. 267.

“Asking why, of the work of all the twentieth-century poets, Rilke’s difficult poetry acquired such popularity in the West, the critic Paul De Man suggested that it might be because ‘many have read him as if he addressed the most secluded parts of their selves….” p. 269.

“…as General Videla defined it, ‘a terrorist is not just someone with a gun or bomb, but also someone who spreads ideas that are contrary to Western and Christian civilization’ ” p. 289.

“Most readers…have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible.” p. 296.

“…his glasses accuse him: here is a man who will not see the world directly, but relies instead on peering at the dead words on a printed page.” p. 297.

“…compares himself to Ptolemy II of Alexandria, who accumulated books but not knowledge.” p. 297.

Seneca: “Many people use books not as tools for study but as decorations for the dining room.” p. 299.

“The shelves of the books we haven’t written, like those of books we haven’t read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal library’s farthest space.” p. 309.

Comment: Manguel has given us plenty of ideas to think about reading, an occupation that we generally take for granted. For me, reading provides ideas, ideas cause me to think about life, and sometimes cause me to act. I would like to see some day a book about how people read and how they have used what they have read. I would like to see a book about people’s five greatest ideas discovered in books. And a list of the five most memorable books that people have read and why. I would like to read more about people’s experiences with reading. RayS.