Alan Jacobs

Nicholas Carr:

Muñoz’s lecture is itself a long and challenging one. He had to spend a long time at the lectern to deliver it, and the audience had to sit a long time in their chairs to hear it. The reader of the transcript, too, has to devote a long time to reading it. What we have here is a kind of reciprocity of courtesies. The paying of attention — to a painting, to a lecture, to an essay, to a person, to anything — is also always a paying of courtesy. In paying attention we pay respect.