The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1880-05-13
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THE BOOKS PEOPLE ARE READING

THE BOOKS PEOPLE AXE hhAOlNO
Mr.. Charles Dudley Warner says in the
Christian Union that professor in one of
our leading colleges lately told him of a
freshman who came to him with the con-
fession that he had never read a book in
his life, Another professor in another
college, also one of the principal New
England colleges, gave him recently the
case of sophomore who stood well in
his classes, but who made the same ac-
acknowledgement. He had studied his text
books to good purpose; but as for read
ing books for pleasure or pr fit, he had
never done it.
Of course, these are extreme cases, as
Mr.. Warner says; but any one who sup
poses that literature generally has much
interest for our college youth at this
time, would find out that there is COM
partively little taste for it among them if
he should mix with the boys in their
college quarters. They read books Ger.
tainly; but what are the books? Mostly
the current novels; not the standard fic-
ton of the past, but the novels which
are finished last week and published this
week in paper covers or without any
covers. They constitute almost the sole
reading, voluntarily undertaken, by the
great majority of these young fellows.
The supply is 80 great and 50 rapidly re-
plenished that they never need be with
out fresh story, for which they have to
pay only very small sum.
The proportion of boys at Harvard
and Yale, for instance, who haYe never
read book is small indeed; but the pro.
portion of those who have never read
any thing but novels, aGd the later ones
at that, are very considerable. AS to
working the mine of English literature
after the manner of the fathers they
have no care to do it, and they do not do
it unless their course of study sends
them there and the reading becomes
task.
But they are not exceptional in this
respect The food of current literature,
of good, noteworthy and important lit
erature, that it alone more than satisfies
the taste for reading of men of average
intelligence; and, as Mr.. James Payn
SAYS in the last number of the Nine.
teenth Century, a good deal Of the as3er.
tion of the preference for old literature
is merely pretense, People pretend to
an exaggerated fondness for authors
whom in reality they never read, and
with whom, perChance, their aCqVaint-
ance is of the slightest They would be
ashamed to acknowledge their ignorance.
But the tremendous activity in the
production of fiction, within the past %
years especially, and the present extra
ordinary cheapness of fiction, owing to
the multiplication of reprints of foreign
novels, which are sold at from ten TO
twenty cents, are undoubtedly having
the effect to supply the larger part Of the
demand for reading with a sort of litera'
ture which is least profitable as a steady
intellectual diet. The average of these
novels is remarkable good, and their pro-
duction has become line of business in
which there is an increasing number of
expert Workmen. But while the aver
age is improved, the number of novels
fit to take a permanent place in litera
ture does not gain many additions, They
are generally nothing but fairly or clev'
erly told stories, by men and women
who have learned the trick of making
tales to sell.
But, outside of novels, there never was
q time when the current literature more
absorbed the attention of the public
Theology, science, politics, sociology,
travels, historical investigation, and all
branches of human inquiry, have of ate
years produced new literature, Colored
by the ideas of this particular century,
and moulded in accordance with its pop
ular intellectual methods. To keep up
with that, occupies all or large part OF
the time the more serious minds can
give to reading. 1t may not be a litera-
ture flooded with the light of genius, but
1t is one which is animated by the spirit
of the time and adapted to it's inquiring
mood.
We therefore see that, along with the
hosts of novels, substantial editions and
the cheap reprints Of the graver contem'
porary works are commanding an extra
ordinary sale, and are having Circula-
ton unexampled in that department ol
literature. And among those most
sought after are works of modern relig
ious inquiry and discussion. Meanwhile
the Harpers tell us that they have al
ready sold more than 40, 1000 copies of the
Memoirs of Madame de Remusat, though
they issue only one of several editions Of
that new dissection of the character Of
Napoleon and new portrait of the man
and his piuchbeCk court.
This is assuredly an unexampled time
in our publishing business, and re-
markable period in the history of liter
ature and literary taste,-N, Y Sun,