The Virtues of Reading

by Joseph Kupfer

What is at Stake?

In Danny DeVito's film Matilda, Harry Wormwood berates his young daughter, the title character, when she insists on reading. He tells her, "There's nothing you can get from a book that you can't get faster from television." But I think Matilda's would-be visionary father is blind to crucial habits of mind fostered by reading books that are not acquired from watching television, video, or film. I shall sketch a few of the virtues cultivated by reading novels which are not developed as well, if at all, by the experience of visual story-telling. Quoting a movie to initiate this comparison may seem a bit odd, but it is suited to the irony of a movie whose heroine is an exemplary reader.