Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #363945 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781593761875
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Author and Maryland Institute College of Art professor Brottman (High Theory/Low Culture) challenges the conventional wisdom of her fellow compulsive readers, positing that "while illiteracy is just as dangerous as sexual ignorance, in both cases there's a case to be made for moderation." As the title entendre suggests, Brottman is an advocate of reading for pleasure, but she draws witty and serious ties between literacy and a number of impulses, compulsions and neuroses: voyeurism, celebrity worship, guilt, isolation and "Severe Disappointment with Reality." With thoughtful deference to those "smart, well-educated people... for whom reading is anything but 'fun-damental,'" she cites recent titles challenging the reading-is-good-for-you "superstition" (How to Talk About Books you Haven't Read, Everything Bad is Good for You), mines her own past for tales of reading excess ("I became something of a ghoul myself, buried all day in my bedroom... except to renew my library books") and looks hard at "some of the things literature... can't do." Brottman beats a winding path through library stacks, "ought" books and the virtues of true crime. Of course she rallies for the home team, locating reading's greatest virtue in its faculty for individual self-discovery (not unlike masturbation). With sharp observations, a brisk style and a wide range of topics, Brottman's is a rare feat: a crowd-pleaser that could make converts out of readers and nonreaders alike.
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Review
Brottman boldly challenges the current conventional wisdom, expressed in such venues as citywide reading campaigns and the NEA's Reading at Risk report, that reading is an unalloyed good...Citing her own childhood reading obsession, devouring horror stories 'locked away in my attic bedroom . . . avoiding everything I could, except books,' she describes how reading turned her 'from an ordinary, introspective teenager into a barely functional recluse.'... Yet, as Brottman generously shares her own reading obsessions, she subtly challenges us to consider what gives each of us who love to read our unique passion for the written word." -- Shelf Awareness

"The Solitary Vice will make you rethink your own relation to reading. Brottman is wonderful at reminding us what a very complicated act--of fantasy, recompense, adventurism and (sometimes) perversity--reading a book can be." -- Laura Kipnis

"Brottman is an advocate of reading for pleasure, but she draws witty and serious ties between literacy and a number of impulses, compulsions and neuroses: voyeurism, celebrity worship, guilt, isolation and `Severe Disappointment with Reality' . . . With sharp observations, a brisk style and a wide range of topics, Brottman's is a rare feat: a crowd-pleaser that could make converts out of readers and nonreaders alike." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Mikita Brottman is one of us: another victim of the unhealthiest and most solipsistic of media pleasures. In this compelling condemnation of literature, she nonetheless offers us one more reason to pick up a good book--her own." -- Douglas Rushkoff

"Brottman is wonderful at reminding us what a [complicated] act--of fantasy, recompense, adventurism, and (sometimes) perversity--reading...can be." -- Laura Kipnis

"Her book is part provocation, part memoir and part memorable roadmap to some of literature's best." -- Geeta Sharma-Jensen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinal

"Here's a book, from a professor no less, that asks the heretical question: Is reading as great as all those preachy public service campaigns would have us believe? ...But as Mikita Brottman, who teaches literature and college at the Maryland Institute College of Art, acknowledges, she's not against reading. She's for thinking about reading in more complex ways:'It's easy to get into the habit of reading; what's much more difficult is learning to become a conscientious, discerning reader.' The Solitary Vice will help." -- USA Today

"In this compelling condemnation of literature, [Brottman]... offers us one more reason to pick up a good book--her own." -- Douglas Rushkoff

"[Brottman's] erudite and witty new work [is] a wild literary ride [which] challenges the current conventional wisdom..." -- Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness

Customer Reviews

Ignore the Title!
This is not a book "against reading" - take the title with a pinch of salt. In fact, if you love to read, you'll love this book. It's a witty, clever account of Brottman's own love-hate relationship with books, with lots of sidetracks and digressions about the kinds of books she loves, and why she loves them. You'll read it in one sitting - and end up with a whole new reading list. Highly recommended for reading addicts and other hopeless bibliophiles.

Confessions of a book addict
It's easy to speak breathlessly about the heady pleasures of reading, but Brottman, for most of The Solitary Vice, anyway, provides a wise corrective. No, she is not completely "against reading", but she does persuasively argue that the act of reading (literature) isn't the intrinsically beneficial, spiritual edifying practice it's often depicted as by overzealous educators. Through both humorous memoir (that this reader related to uncomfortably) and sociological evidence, she effectively makes this simple point and from there suggests some implications for how exactly we might more realistically appreciate the pleasures of the novel.

I only give four stars because the book is, in my opinion, padded with a lot of illustrations and material that only has a tangental connection to the main argument. Nearly half of the book is devoted to the discussion of a few somewhat arcane genres of "low culture" reading - the celebrity confessional, the true-crime novel, the psychological profile - for reasons that are hardly justified (although there are a few weak attempts) in terms of the main thesis of the book. At times these discussions are rewarding, as when her survey of author biographies points out that many celebrated writers of renown (Nabokov, Henry James, etc) were widely considered to be boorish and ironically lacking in self-knowledge, but it's a quirky sampling of topics.

thoroughly entertaining
The original thesis, that reading is not intrinsically salutary, and the subsequent chapters on genres the author loves may not hang together as a sustained and cohesive argument, but Brottman's enthusiasm and her nose for compelling information make this a bit of a blast.