Fidgeters, unite!

Last month I wrote about blogger Brittney Gilbert's comparing her experience reading INFINITE JEST to meditation, and admitted that my time with the book was not like that. Ms. Gilbert, you have a compadre! L.A. Times books editor David Ulin laments in "The lost art of reading" that disappearing into a book just isn't as easy as it used to be. The difference, of course, is that Gilbert's job forces her to read blogs all day, whereas Ulin I assume can delegate that work to someone else.

Blogger Ed Champion (through whom I found this essay) retorts that Ulin is confusing meditating with reading unthinkingly and glorifying the latter, writing that the editor "may as well have written an open letter of resignation — not just from his editorial position, but from the rustling possibilities of books."

Frankly, I'm starting to feel a little defensive of my reading habits. I may suck at meditating, but that hasn't set me back in books! I can read just as well as you can! But Mr. Ulin, if you can only do your job in some holy temple devoted to the rite of reading, then you need to make that possible. You work for a major newspaper; surely you can mock up a Do Not Disturb sign in no time. If that seems like too much work, just get joyfully, messily into it again.