The Lost Art of Reading
Author:
Publisher:
Varies, see individual formats and editions
Pub. Date:
2019
Language:
English
Description
Excerpt: "The population of the civilized world to-day may be divided into two classes, -millionaires and those who would like to be millionaires. The rest are artists, poets, tramps, and babies-and do not count. Poets and artists do not count until after they are dead. Tramps are put in prison. Babies are expected to get over it. A few more summers, a few more winters-with short skirts or with down on their chins-they shall be seen burrowing with the rest of us. One almost wonders sometimes, why it is that the sun keeps on year after year and day after day turning the globe around and around, heating it and lighting it and keeping things growing on it, when after all, when all is said and done (crowded with wonder and with things to live with, as it is), it is a comparatively empty globe. No one seems to be using it very much, or paying very much attention to it, or getting very much out of it. There are never more than a very few men on it at a time, who can be said to be really living on it. They are engaged in getting a living and in hoping that they are going to live sometime. They are also going to read sometime. When one thinks of the wasted sunrises and sunsets-the great free show of heaven-the door opens every night-of the little groups of people straggling into it-of the swarms of people hurrying back and forth before it, jostling their getting-a-living lives up and down before it, not knowing it is there, -one wonders why it is there. Why does it not fall upon us, or its lights go suddenly out upon us? We stand in the days and the nights like stalls-suns flying over our heads, stars singing through space beneath our feet. But we do not see. Every man's head in a pocket, -boring for his living in a pocket-or being bored for his living in a pocket, -why should he see? True we are not without a philosophy for this-to look over the edge of our stalls with. "Getting a living is living," we say. We whisper it to ourselves-in our pockets. Then we try to get it. When we get it, we try to believe it-and when we get it we do not believe anything. Let every man under the walled-in heaven, the iron heaven, speak for his own soul. No one else shall speak for him. We only know what we know-each of us in our own pockets. The great books tell us it has not always been an iron heaven or a walled-in heaven. But into the faces of the flocks of the children that come to us, year after year, we look, wondering. They shall not do anything but burrowing-most of them. Our very ideals are borrowings. So are our books. Religion burrows. It barely so much as looks at heaven. Why should a civilized man-a man who has a pocket in civilization -a man who can burrow-look at heaven? It is the glimmering boundary line where burrowing leaves off. Time enough. In the meantime, the shovel. Let the stars' wheel. Do men look at stars with shovels?"
More Details
Contributors:
ISBN:
9783965376816
9787664639814
4057664639813
9787664639814
4057664639813
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Grouping Information
Grouped Work ID | d6fe649c-e811-ab3d-23a5-775570c4fe33 |
---|---|
Grouping Title | lost art of reading |
Grouping Author | gerald stanley lee |
Grouping Category | book |
Grouping Language | English (eng) |
Last Grouping Update | 2024-04-28 22:53:10PM |
Last Indexed | 2024-04-28 22:57:36PM |
Solr Fields
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0
accelerated_reader_reading_level
0
author
Lee, Gerald Stanley
author2-role
hoopla digital
author_display
Lee, Gerald Stanley
display_description
Excerpt: "The population of the civilized world to-day may be divided into two classes, -millionaires and those who would like to be millionaires. The rest are artists, poets, tramps, and babies-and do not count. Poets and artists do not count until after they are dead. Tramps are put in prison. Babies are expected to get over it. A few more summers, a few more winters-with short skirts or with down on their chins-they shall be seen burrowing with the rest of us. One almost wonders sometimes, why it is that the sun keeps on year after year and day after day turning the globe around and around, heating it and lighting it and keeping things growing on it, when after all, when all is said and done (crowded with wonder and with things to live with, as it is), it is a comparatively empty globe. No one seems to be using it very much, or paying very much attention to it, or getting very much out of it. There are never more than a very few men on it at a time, who can be said to be really living on it. They are engaged in getting a living and in hoping that they are going to live sometime. They are also going to read sometime. When one thinks of the wasted sunrises and sunsets-the great free show of heaven-the door opens every night-of the little groups of people straggling into it-of the swarms of people hurrying back and forth before it, jostling their getting-a-living lives up and down before it, not knowing it is there, -one wonders why it is there. Why does it not fall upon us, or its lights go suddenly out upon us? We stand in the days and the nights like stalls-suns flying over our heads, stars singing through space beneath our feet. But we do not see. Every man's head in a pocket, -boring for his living in a pocket-or being bored for his living in a pocket, -why should he see? True we are not without a philosophy for this-to look over the edge of our stalls with. "Getting a living is living," we say. We whisper it to ourselves-in our pockets. Then we try to get it. When we get it, we try to believe it-and when we get it we do not believe anything. Let every man under the walled-in heaven, the iron heaven, speak for his own soul. No one else shall speak for him. We only know what we know-each of us in our own pockets. The great books tell us it has not always been an iron heaven or a walled-in heaven. But into the faces of the flocks of the children that come to us, year after year, we look, wondering. They shall not do anything but burrowing-most of them. Our very ideals are borrowings. So are our books. Religion burrows. It barely so much as looks at heaven. Why should a civilized man-a man who has a pocket in civilization -a man who can burrow-look at heaven? It is the glimmering boundary line where burrowing leaves off. Time enough. In the meantime, the shovel. Let the stars' wheel. Do men look at stars with shovels?"
format_category_eh
eBook
format_eh
eBook
id
d6fe649c-e811-ab3d-23a5-775570c4fe33
isbn
4057664639813
9783965376816
9787664639814
9783965376816
9787664639814
last_indexed
2024-04-29T04:57:36.895Z
lexile_score
-1
literary_form
Fiction
literary_form_full
Fiction
local_time_since_added_eh
Year
primary_isbn
9783965376816
publishDate
2019
publisher
Good Press
Otbebookpublishing
Project Gutenberg
Otbebookpublishing
Project Gutenberg
recordtype
grouped_work
subject_facet
Electronic books
Reference books -- Fiction
Reference books -- Fiction
title_display
The Lost Art of Reading
title_full
The Lost Art of Reading
The Lost Art of Reading [electronic resource] / Gerald Stanley Lee
The Lost Art of Reading [electronic resource] / Gerald Stanley Lee
title_short
The Lost Art of Reading
topic_facet
Electronic books
History
Literary Criticism
Nonfiction
Reference
Reference books
History
Literary Criticism
Nonfiction
Reference
Reference books
Solr Details Tables
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hoopla:MWT16276928 | Online Hoopla Collection | Online Hoopla | eBook | eBook | 1 | false | true | Hoopla | https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/14683429?utm_source=MARC&Lid=hh4435 | Available Online |
record_details
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hoopla:MWT12702568 | eBook | eBook | English | Otbebookpublishing | 2019 | 1 online resource (441 pages) | ||
overdrive:1f83a833-e51d-41fd-a2f5-67cebc09b85e | eBook | eBook | English | Project Gutenberg | ||||
hoopla:MWT16276928 | eBook | eBook | English | Good Press | 2019 | 1 online resource |
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hoopla:MWT12702568 | Available Online | Available Online | false | true | false | false | false | false | ||||
hoopla:MWT16276928 | Available Online | Available Online | false | true | false | false | false | false |