...passive. "When you're reading," said, "you're not--you're not really doing anything."

To readers, or people who define themselves as readers (a group not quite corresponding to the former), these words must sound bad: ignorant, brutish, exactly-the-thing-we've-been-struggling-against-all-our-lives stuff. But that is not how they sit in my memory. You had to be there, to see his face when he said it, and to hear the tone in his voice. There was no malice, nor even hint of disrespect for the written word as the preserve of an irrelevant race of obsolete human wildlife (there were other boys, and teachers, who thought like this). Rather, this boy just wanted to know. He was interested--because he was an intelligent and noble soul, and because he had never read a book in his life unless required to do so by schools or parents--in my...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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