Sunset Upon Reading and Night Upon the Book
What the death of a literate culture means for classical learning — by Devin O'Donnell
When the half-tipsy Nick Caraway stumbles into the library of Gatsby’s mansion, he meets an even more tipsy gentleman who declares his surprise at finding real books on display:
“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona fide piece of printed matter.”
This sentiment will be the norm from now on. Whenever we enter a house or an office and catch sight of bookshelves with real books that people actually read, we too will say, “A bona fide piece of printed matter.” Though we will be saying it someday with a sigh and with more resignation. Why? Because it is the sunset of reading, and it is night upon the book.
For decades, critics have lamented the irony that literacy has plummeted more in the age of information than at any other time. But decline of reading has accelerated in the last few years. Two of the most widely read articles in First Things both reference the death of reading amid the hastening flood of digital sources of media. In a 2025 piece, Mary Harrington argues that we now live in a “post-print world,” resulting in “a people less primed for analytic thought but more attuned to patterns.” (As my friend C. R. Wiley said to me, if you are at all in the classical education space, you need to read her article, for many reasons.) Harrington writes:
Digital reading is not “making people dumber” in some absolute sense, just less analytic. And amid the shroud-waving over smartphones and IQ , another consciousness-altering effect has gone relatively unremarked: the re-emergence of modes of thinking that emphasize pattern, image, and symbolism.
The physical form of print literature invites long-form linear reasoning, analytic reflection, and a deepening of felt interiority. By contrast, as the social critic Nicholas Carr has argued, digital reading is filled with distraction and multi-directional links, and characterized by overwhelming volume and variety. To navigate information in this form necessitates a different mode of content consumption—one that responds to information overload by filtering less for linear logic than for latent patterns.
This actually describes an older, more “classical” approach to reading, and the results signify a massive sea change. Such a “resurgent popular facility for discerning patterns will entail a renewed interest in, and capacity to apprehend, meaning as a real feature of the world and not merely a phantasmagoric obstacle to its study.” In other words, this older form of reading cultivates the ability to map the events of a story (or of our daily life) onto the transcendent structures of meaning in Reality.
We can’t dispute the fact that “internet content consumption degrades long-form concentration.” But before we tear our clothes and sprinkle ashes on our heads, Harrington invites us to consider the way in which this digital effect also has new benefits: for it “heightens awareness of patterns of shared meaning, which echo mnemonic communicative registers more characteristic of medieval culture than of modernity.” (Hence, the meme craze that is so wildly popular, especially amongst young people.)
It’s also no surprise that we see this form of reading clearly in the wisdom literature of the Scriptures. When Solomon tells us of the adulterous woman, for instance, he is giving us an archetype, a pattern that not only allows us to identify what this kind of woman looks like but also allows us to predict the future outcome of one’s involvement with her. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then perhaps mastery of pattern recognition is one of the ends of wisdom.
What does this mean for classical educators? It means there is developing in our age a natural and intuitive aptitude for the art of Grammar. Grammar is, after all, the art of discerning the shades of meaning in a word. It penetrates the superficial presentation of things, seeking the deeper meanings in word or text. Perhaps the best example of this skill was the way in which the Church Fathers read the Bible, demonstrated in the fourfold reading of Scripture—a discipline we might also call “pattern recognition.”
Note that the grammar employed in the patristic period was not the same as the “grammatical historical” method of our modern theological schools. We find the art of Grammar applied not only to the reading of Holy Writ but also to the pagan stories and literature. Naturally, such skill was needed to distinguish not only the value of reading pagan literature but also the precise meaning of it in the light of divine revelation. St. Augustine demonstrated a competence for this art , of course, though he even questioned the value of reading Virgil and “weeping for Dido.” Perhaps a better example of the skill for allegorical interpretation was Gregory the Great, whose works demonstrate the combination of sound grammatical technique and pastoral wisdom. In those days, there was much to figure out—a grammatical phrase that still remains with us today.
In other words, grammar is back. We are less concerned with what the “expert” has to say, for instance, and more concerned with whether the larger narrative structure maps onto Reality. One need only look to the discredited authority of the medical establishment during COVID, or to the ongoing debate over vaccines. Or, for a more recent example, it seems almost commonplace to suggest, as Vice President Vance mentioned, that aliens are probably just demons. But the revelation of such things is not simply due to the “age of disclosure” in which we now live. The fact is, truth and meaning have always required interpretation. To make sense out of the chaos of mere input is the domain of grammar. Without interpretation stats and data are quite literally meaningless.
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