On Edith Wharton’s essay “The Vice of Reading”

So, Edith Wharton’s a book snob. 
In her essay “The Vice of Reading”, she makes a distinction between “the mechanical reader” and “the born reader”. 

“The idea that reading is a moral quality has unhappily led many conscientious persons to renounce their innocuous dalliance with light literature for more strenuous intercourse. These are the persons who “make it a rule to read.” The “platform” of the more ambitious actually includes the large resolve to keep up with all that is being written! The desire to keep up is apparently the strongest incentive to this class of readers: they seem to regard literature as a cable-car that can be “boarded” only by running; while many a born reader may be found unblushingly loitering in the tea-cup times of stage-coach and posting-chaise, without so much as being aware of the new means of locomotion.” 

Ha ha ha. 
She clarifies: 

“To read is not a virtue; but to read well is an art, and an art that only the born reader can acquire. The gift of reading is no exception to the rule that all natural gifts need to be cultivated by practice and discipline; but unless the innate aptitude exist the training will be wasted. It is the delusion of the mechanical reader to think that intentions may take the place of aptitude.” 

I think she’s attacking a great many book bloggers/ Goodreads reviewers: 

“The mechanical reader, as he always reads consciously, knows exactly how much he reads, and will tell you so with the pride of the careful housekeeper who has calculated to within half an ounce the daily consumption of food in her household.” 

I mean, she writes this: 

“It is a part of the whole duty of the mechanical reader to pronounce an opinion on every book he reads, and he is sometimes driven to strange shifts in the conscientious performance of this task. It is his nature to mistrust and dislike every book he does not understand. “I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.” In his heart of hearts the mechanical reader may sometimes echo this wish of Envy in Doctor Faustus; but, it being also a part of his duty to be “fond of reading,” he is obliged to repress his biblioeidal impulse, and go through the form of trying the case, when lynching would have been so much simpler.
It is only natural that the reader who looks on reading as a moral obligation should confound moral and intellectual judgments. Here is a book that everyone is talking about; the number of its editions is an almost unanswerable proof of its merit; but to the mechanical reader it is cryptic, and he takes refuge in disapproval. He admits the cleverness, of course; but one of the characters is “not nice”; ergo, the book is not nice; he is surprised that you should have cared to read it.” 

Human beings just don’t change over time. 
Such a delicious essay. Read it in full here: https://www.anthologyshortstories.eu/edith-wharton-the-vice-of-reading/ 

I love Edith Wharton even more now.