This was Nabokov’s way of lamenting over the bad readers that were a by-product of post-war America.:
“Select four answers to the question what should a reader be to be a good reader:
The reader should belong to a book club.
The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine.
The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle.
The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none.
The reader should have seen the book in a movie.
The reader should be a budding author.
The reader should have imagination.
The reader should have memory.
The reader should have a dictionary.
The reader should have some artistic sense.”
The author goes into great length about the conditions which foster a paraliterary reader and the inevitability of the bad reader. Read more here and try to figure out which category of reader you may be: Good Reader, Bad Reader by Merve Emre.
