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The Page Isn’t Dead, Your Attention Is Under Siege

Every few years we are invited to attend the same funeral. Someone declares that nobody reads anymore, that the printed page is finished, that books are an aging technology destined to become a museum object while the living culture migrates to earbuds and short video. It is a tempting story because it flatters our sense that we are witnessing a clean break with the past, a decisive turn of the wheel.

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Best of David Boles, Blogs: Vol. 9 (2018) is Ready for Purchase!

It is that time of year again, when we thank you for all the interactions you have shared with us throughout the last 12 months; and now we ask that you purchase the latest edition of — Best of David Boles, Blogs: Vol. 9 (2018) — to help us continue to protect the good intentions of humanity, and we do that every day, all year, without using any advertising, or making any other asks of you.

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Does the Western Literary Canon Need Fewer White Men?

Ask a random current student if he or she has read something by William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, or Mark Twain, and the answer will almost certainly be a yes— whether that “yes” is voiced with fondness, indifference, or bitterness. Ask that student’s parents or grandparents the same question, and despite generational gaps, the answer likely will not change.

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Reflecting on of Banned Books Week

A young boy sits in the corner of a schoolroom, a coat on his lap. He looks under it intently. He looks periodically toward the door and sighs contently when he sees it remains shut. His quiet is soon interrupted when a teacher loudly opens the door and, seeing him sit there, comes over and taps him on the shoulder. “Young man,” he says, “What are you doing in here?” “Nothing, sir,” he says, his voice trailing off. “Is that right?”

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Reading Character Voices in Your Head

When I lived in Seattle, I once attended a reading of the Megillas Esther, the ancient story of the triumph of the Jewish people over the wicked Haman who intended to wipe them out from the face of the earth, that really was special because of the way that the reader went through the story. When he would read the lines of dialogue as spoken by people in the story, he would read them in their voices — Queen Esther in one way, the vicious Haman in his own nasty voice. I appreciated it quite a bit because I would often do the same thing when reading it to myself — and when reading most other fiction, for that matter. Even some nonfiction — I tend to hear the voice of David Sedaris when I am reading his autobiographical pieces.

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