A new addition to the blogroll here, one “Cuff” of the Countersignature blog, recently made what I think is a stupendous find: a 1914 book, by one MacGregor Jenkins, entitled The Reading Public, available via Google Books.
Here’s how Cuff introduces the book’s content:
Jenkins divides the “reading public” into book readers and magazine readers. He further subdivides the book readers into three categories from least to greatest numbers: the sponge reader, the sieve reader, and the duck-back reader. The sponge reader reads “fewer and better books than his fellows” — resulting, according to Mr. Jenkins, in his being ignored by authors and publishers. The sieve reader reads quite a bit and is full of surface facts and plots and literary gossip, but doesn’t have the critical acumen of the sponge reader. Meanwhile, the lowly duck-back reader, while great in number, absorbs absolutely nothing and is entirely unchanged by reading because reading is for the duck-back simply a way to kill time (Jenkins believes the swelling of this number to be caused by the increasing phenomenon of commuting).
I wonder what kind of reader I am? Sad to say, it feels more sieve-like (although I’d love to be a sponge). The Missus would say this has something to do with my being a Gemini, and/or being born in a Chinese Year of the Rabbit. Grasshopper, not an ant. All that.
Interestingly, Jenkins’s book — despite the title — also has quite a bit to say to authors. (He was apparently a magazine editor.) Remember again that this is from, well, a century ago, to all intents and purposes. Bear in mind all that Maxwell Perkins, golden-age-of-authors-editors stuff. And, of course, make some allowances for the pre-World War I syntax:
