'An After-Hope to Please'

Several readers have quibbled with the late Oscar Mandel’s assertion that “literature exists to make men happy.” Oscar celebrates the “pleasure-giving capacity” of books, as I quoted him writing in Thursday’s post. I knew such statements would provoke certain categories of readers. Many confuse pleasure derived from reading with titillation, escape or distraction, something like the marketing pitch for so-called “beach books,” what my father would have called “a stupid waste of time.” Rudyard Kipling said in his lecture to students, "The Uses of Reading" (1912): “There is, or there was, an idea that reading in itself is a virtuous and holy deed. I can’t quite agree with this, because it seems to me that the mere fact of a man’s being fond of reading proves nothing one way or the other. He may be constitutionally lazy; or he may be overstrained, and so take refuge in a book to rest himself. He may be full of curiosity and wonder about the life on which he is just entering; and for that…