So far in The Kids These Days and The Novels, we’ve seen people complain that novels can cause earthquakes, that novels can be written by women, that novels can cause false taste in criticism and art, that novels are too much fun to possibly be good for you, and that there are so darned many … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: Clara Reeve and the Circulating Library Menace
John Ruskin was a multi-talented artist, writer, drafter, and social thinker, as well as one of the top art critics of the Victorian age. He also had some goofy ideas about novels that, coincidentally, sound a lot like Coleridge’s. In his book The Elements of Drawing, Ruskin tries to teach his readers to develop their … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: John Ruskin and the Case of Endangered Art
In Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes I will run the risk of asserting, that where the reading of novels prevails as a habit, it occasions in time the entire destruction of the powers of the mind : it is such an utter loss to the reader, that it is not … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels: Lake Poets vs. Edinburg Review
Right now I’m sure many parents would rather their kids spend less time playing video games or texting or whatever kids do these days and more time reading. Consider, for example, this Wall Street Journal article which complains about all the silly things the kids these days write because they don’t do enough of the … Continue reading The Kids These Days and The Novels
FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF THE KIDS THESE DAYS AND GENERAL HAND WRINGING OVER THE FACT THAT THE WORLD HAS CHANGED SINCE WE WERE THE KIDS THESE DAYS There are lots of very good reasons to panic. How about these? Your guidebook says not to panic. Verdict: Be prepared to panic. You’re a cop one day … Continue reading The Kids These Days
