Cut or Uncut Leaves?
I love the changing discussions of the book world. Here's a short article from the Philadelphia Times from the late 1800's:
Cut or Uncut Leaves?
In these days of rapid transit, when people will scarcely take time to eat their meals, and when the one great end of human ingenuity is the invention of labor-saving devices, it is not strange that the publishers should be urged to sell their magazines ready cut. People who do their reading, or what they call reading, on the run, cannot be expected to take time to cut the leaves, and they actually complain that much good matter is lost to them because they cannot conveniently get at it.
These persons probably would like to have the nuts brought to the table ready cracked. You can eat almonds a great deal faster if their shells have been removed beforehand--much faster than you can digest them. But it is a poor nut that is not worth cracking, and the time occupied in breaking the shells is the one thing that makes nuts desirable at dessert.
The very same principle applies to reading. A person who does not take pleasure in deliberately cuttin ght leaves of a new magazine is no reader. He is a mere devourer. He is not only incapable of understanding the true intellectual enjoyment to be had in the act of reading, but he is in too great haste really to read with rofit. The savages who go at a magazine or book with a lead pencil, a hairpin, or perhaps with their fingers, leaving jagged edges to mark their devastating track, are rather worse than those who do not cut the leaves at all.
But surely reading people ought not to be asked to sacrifice their pleasures and privileges for the sake of either class of barbarians. The magazines and novels sold in trains and at railway stations might have their leaves cut, since they are not meant for careful readers; but those who like to have the margins thus mutilated should be made to pay extra for it. There is too much reading in the cars as it is, and the practice ought rather to be discouraged than promoted.
Cut or Uncut Leaves?
In these days of rapid transit, when people will scarcely take time to eat their meals, and when the one great end of human ingenuity is the invention of labor-saving devices, it is not strange that the publishers should be urged to sell their magazines ready cut. People who do their reading, or what they call reading, on the run, cannot be expected to take time to cut the leaves, and they actually complain that much good matter is lost to them because they cannot conveniently get at it.
These persons probably would like to have the nuts brought to the table ready cracked. You can eat almonds a great deal faster if their shells have been removed beforehand--much faster than you can digest them. But it is a poor nut that is not worth cracking, and the time occupied in breaking the shells is the one thing that makes nuts desirable at dessert.
The very same principle applies to reading. A person who does not take pleasure in deliberately cuttin ght leaves of a new magazine is no reader. He is a mere devourer. He is not only incapable of understanding the true intellectual enjoyment to be had in the act of reading, but he is in too great haste really to read with rofit. The savages who go at a magazine or book with a lead pencil, a hairpin, or perhaps with their fingers, leaving jagged edges to mark their devastating track, are rather worse than those who do not cut the leaves at all.
But surely reading people ought not to be asked to sacrifice their pleasures and privileges for the sake of either class of barbarians. The magazines and novels sold in trains and at railway stations might have their leaves cut, since they are not meant for careful readers; but those who like to have the margins thus mutilated should be made to pay extra for it. There is too much reading in the cars as it is, and the practice ought rather to be discouraged than promoted.
posted by Scott Givens at 3:07 PM
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