I have begun to notice this malady in other people, too. I have been asking, slyly, for recommendations that would rekindle my passion, and nobody seems to know. Those literary friends of mine—those other readers, my people, who usually fizz with excitement about one book or another—are drawing a blank. “What have you read that’s good lately?” I ask. They shrug. They prevaricate. They say that such-and-such was okay, but they didn’t really love it. They ask if I can suggest something in return. I cannot. It seems to me that it perpetuates itself, this exchange of nothing. Behind it is an
...more
