Howard Jacobson attacks the dearth of 'good readers'
heard readers say, “I don’t like this book because I don’t sympathise with the main character.” […] The language of sympathy and identity and what we call political correctness is killing the way we read. That’s like the end of civilisation. That is the end. In that little sentence is a misunderstanding so profound about the nature of art, education and why we are reading, that it makes you despair. Who ever told anyone that they read a book in order to find themselves?
