# “Literary people” by C.S. Lewis

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2009/10/09/literary-people-by-c-s-lewis/
- Published: 2009-10-09T20:43:45-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“[Unliterary people], though they are sometimes frequent readers, do not set much
store by reading. They turn to it as a last resource. They abandon it with alacrity
as soon as any alternative pastime turns up. It is kept for railway journeys, illnesses,
odd moments of enforced solitude, or for the process called ‘reading oneself to 
sleep.’

They sometimes combine it with desultory conversation; often, with listening to 
the radio. But literary people are always looking for leisure and silence in which
to read and do so with their whole attention. When they are denied such attentive
and undisturbed reading even for a few days they feel impoverished.”

–C.S. Lewis, _[An Experiment in Criticism](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521422817?ie=UTF8&tag=toletaupanre-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0521422817)_(
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 2-3.

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