Let Them Eat Prose (Harpers.org):
Wanted, a reading public. This is what the publishers say is needed—that is, serious readers, those who care enough about books to buy them, own them, and really possess themselves of their contents. This is what the writers say is needed—the writers who are becoming almost more numerous than the readers. Nearly everybody writes for publication; it is impossible to provide vehicles enough for their contributions, and the reading public to sustain periodicals does not increase in proportion. Everybody agrees that this is the most intelligent, active-minded age that ever was, and in its way the most prolific and productive age. Is there a glut and overproduction in the literary world as well as in other departments? Isn’t it an odd outcome of diffused education and of cheap publications, the decline in the habit of continuous serious reading?