A man among books …

… Clifton Fadiman Didn’t Mind Being Called Schoolmasterish | Humanities. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Introducing his 1957 essay collection, Any Number Can Play, he was eerily prescient about our e-mail-and-text-addled, Twitterpated age. “Now there is a tendency to absorb the instantaneously received idea, mentally file it, and proceed to the next message transmitted by the tireless mass-communicators,” he wrote. “With so many signals crowding in upon us, there is no time, and soon no inclination, to arrange them in order of importance, reflect upon them, and take proper action. Eventually the alert reception of the signal suffices.”