Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 May 1883 — Books in Plenty the Death of Conversation. [ARTICLE]

Books in Plenty the Death of Conversation.

We are deluged with books that are born and fret their hour upon the counter and then are heard no more. B^Sks—hot account books, but books of no account. Books catalogued in the commonplace. Every one takes his turn at a novel or a drama, and society is the loser by it; for what might pass current in a spontaneous way for cleverness, when saved up and dealt out in ‘book-formula, loses ground and proves itselfnot worth the saving. People are niggardly of being bright, clever and witty in society because they are saving up for the coming book that shall surely yet be written, and that every one is supposed to be writing. All the bon mots are carefully tucked away, nothing is given out of itself. Every story has a price in the book market, and the vapid consequence of all this is that in general society conversation has ceased to exist. People no longer meet to converse. Life is too absorbing. Quiet groups in pleasant parlors have passed away. A larger scale of entertainment interrupts all this. Parties are of the past —“receptions” are the only wear—very crushy, very rapid, very, very much all alike, unless a deliberate stand is taken by tome wearied soul and a forin of entertainment is fixed upon, and in such case one is invited to be the privileged guest at the unfolding of the statue of —i. e., Mr. ’s MS., twenty foolscap pages, read by the author; or, it may be, Mrs. ’s blank verse, or somebody will strain forth Browning. Society has little spontaneity since the whole world turned author, and publishers have taken from it what they cannot pay back. —Boston Transcript.