Letter: Reading for pleasure and possibly more  In a recent
letter (“Critically Reading,” Feb. 16), Stephen Marsh ’13 argues
that all reading is criticism, and a truly uncritical attitude
toward a book is hence impossible, pace Matthew Shaffer in a
recent column (“A critical education,” Feb. 12). This stance
appears to merely redefine “criticism” to the point where it no
longer functions as a useful idea. Granted, a piece of
literature can admit diverse interpretations. It does not follow
that all interpretive reading (which is to say, all reading of
any worth) is sufficiently complex and reasoned to be called
critical.  Even if we agree with Marsh on the vocabulary, there
still remains the enormous difference between reading a book
cerebrally, in a conscious effort to exhaust its ideas and
discover the author’s techniques, and reading it just to be told
a story, the way our ancestors read the Bible, the way we used
to read “Harry Potter” and “ The Chronicles of Narnia,” and the
way some of us still watch mov