I was curious about students’ causal arguments about this sudden eclipse of pleasure reading — again, the They who killed their love of reading. Why did it happen? The most common argument from them was that being made to analyze what they read had killed their enjoyment, not only of the analyzed, assigned texts but of texts in general. Now it’s possible that this is true, or true for some people, but because I am a teacher and because it’s my job to encourage people to think, I simply can’t accept it. It is baldly anti-intellectual and it is wildly counter to my experience and my observations of the world. I simply do not believe that thinking about things is in itself toxic to our enjoyment of those things — if that were true, there would be no sports radio. I absolutely believe that thinking about things in the wrong way — for example, in a deadening or loveless way — or under unnecessary pressure is toxic to our enjoyment of them, but that’s different. With almost anything but reading, deeper understanding leads to deeper pleasure — this is true of sex, football, food, the behavior of pets, everything else in the world. Why should reading be the one exception?