Monday, July 30, 2012

On the other hand …

… Long Island Books: The Great Contrarian | The East Hampton Star. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


Macdonald is right to say that the real challenge is not wide reading, which he feels has deteriorated into skimming, but deep reading, “to bring the slow, cumbersome depths into play, to ruminate, speculate, reflect, wonder, experience what the eye has seen.” This is usually the mandate of art rather than journalism or information, and no computer can supply it any more than Time could. But the arts themselves, much like language, were evolving in Macdonald’s day, and his stubborn adherence to the past, his belief in continuity or slow change, kept him from appreciating this.

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