Dear Aspiring Reader, We regret to inform you that due to an unprecedented number of applicants, we are unable to offer you an article at this time. There were many qualified potential readers, and you should consider yourself among them.
You probably thought to yourself "I've been reading for most of my life. Surely I can peruse through any publication if I put my mind to it." Unfortunately there's a difference between reading high school English papers or iPod instructions and reading a scholarly periodical such as this.
Though I am normally loath to criticize a person's reading, I think you could use it. Your problem is that you rush too much. Relax a little. You sped through the last article and missed all the subtlety, wit, and semicolons. This is a newspaper, not instructions on how to defuse a nuclear bomb.
Please don't let this news dishearten you. There are many other avenues for the semi-literate. Perhaps you should consider reading for smaller publications: pamphlets, greeting cards, billboards. These may give you the jumping off point you need to pursue your lofty ambition.
Or maybe you lack the life experience necessary to competently read. Hit the road and experience the world. You never read better than when your using the newspaper for a blanket on a park bench.
Don't make the mistake of over reading though. I've seen many young, bright-eyed go-getters burn out early because they did something stupid like try to get through an Ayn Randbook without taking precautions. Their eyes burst out the back of their heads just to escape the tedium (trust me, I read it somewhere.)
Hope is not lost though. Many notable and successful readers faced difficulties similar to yours. I myself spent the better part of the 80s reading the Spokane Speaker before my work garnered any attention. Now I read things like the New Yorker, and then tell people all about it. That's probably the most satisfying part about reading. Even right now I get the chance to tell you about reading the New Yorker, and I can feel how impressed you are.
People often ask me where I get my ideas for what to read. There's no easy answer to that. Each reader has to find someone else's voice on their own. Sometimes it will come to you in a flash and you'll think "I should check out that new Steven King book." Other times it helps to look at the work of other readers who may give you a good tip like, "You should check out the new Steven King book."
Here's some free advice; if you're getting into reading for the money, forget it. In today's shrinking market, few readers are successful enough to make a living at it. Sure there are a few celebrity readers who made it big: Oprah, LeVar Burton, Vanna White; but these are the exceptions, not the rules.
A true reader does it out of a love of word, not dreams of power and wealth. If that sounds like you, then I encourage you to go for it and read all you can, just not this particular publication.
Thank you for your interest, and I look forward to your future attempts at book learning.
Sincerely,
John "Quotation Marks" McNamee
P.S. Do not read the preceding letter.
John's column runs bi-weekly on Thursday. He can be reached at mcnamee@cavalierdaily.com.
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