social base: a self-perpetuating minority that we shall call the reading class.” I don’t think of the distinction between readers and nonreaders—better, those who love reading and those who don’t so much—in terms of class, which may be a function of my being a teacher of literature rather than a sociologist, but may also be a function of my knowledge that readers can be found at all social stations (witness the example of William Cobbett). But whatever designations we want to use, it has to be admitted that much of the anxiety about American reading habits, and those in other developed nations
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