Shorter version: Reading Is Good
Jane, as usual, is everywhere, at least in the Sunday papers; her name was invoked in several articles as an icon of the cultural elite.
The East Valley (Arizona) Tribune discusses the so-called reading crisis:
Under the NEA’s definition of literature, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters get lumped in with mysteries, science fiction/fantasy, thrillers, Westerns and romance novels. If figures published by the Romance Writers of America are correct and one out of every three fiction books sold in the United States are romance novels, that means even fewer people are reading the classics.
The Chicago Tribune is a little more specific in a review of a book by critic Terry Eagleton about cultural theory, a subject dear to the heart of Your Editoral Director:
“It is not true that cultural theory avoids close reading. It is neither clinical nor cold-blooded. It is not out to abolish the human spirit, but to bring it down to earth. It does not necessarily interpose itself between the art-work and its recipients. If it can sometimes be an obstacle to real understanding, so can other forms of art criticism. It does not believe that Jeffrey Archer is as good as Jane Austen; it simply inquires what we mean when we make such claims.”
