Why so many want Books that Shriek
You can see all this exemplified, pitifully, in the present day. With the great rush of cheap books (and still cheaper education) that flooded the country at the beginning of this century, the masses simply gorged themselves with indiscriminate reading-matter—of a sort, (and so did many who ought to have known better). Gradually they lost the taste for straight-forward simple stories of human life as it really is; things had to be blood-curdling and highly sensational. The type of reading-matter that had formerly been associated solely with the "dime novel" and depraved youths of the criminal class, found its way into all sorts and conditions of bindings, and all sorts and conditions of homes. People's minds were getting so blunted that they simply could not follow anything unless it was punctuated with lurid lights; they could not grasp anything unless it was crude and bizarre and monstrous; they could not hear anything of the Still Small Voice that is the essence of all beauty in literature, art or nature. Everything had to be in shouts and shrieks to arrest their attention.
Finally, the masses lost the power to read at all, and we are now living in an age when everything must be presented in the most obvious medium—pictures. Few people can concentrate on reading even the day's news—it has to be given in pictures. The picture-palace and the music-hall revue (which is another form of spectacular entertainment) stand for the mental stimulus that is the utmost a large bulk of the population are equal to to-day.
We delude ourselves by saying that we live in such a busy age, we have not time to read. But it is not our lack of time so much as our lack of brain power that is the trouble; and that brain power has been dissipated, primarily, by over-indulgence in desultory reading that was valueless.
All this is to explain why a course of indiscriminate "browsing" is no recommendation for the one who wishes to take up literary work. Steady, quiet, consecutive reading is necessary if we are to do steady, quiet, consecutive thinking; and, without such thinking, it is impossible to write anything worth whiles.
Let your reading extend over a wide range, certainly—the wider the better, so long as you can cover the ground thoroughly—for an author should be well-read. But take care that you do read; don't mistake "nibbling" for reading. Far better know but one poem of Browning thoroughly and understandingly, than have on your shelves a complete set of his works into which you dip at random, when the mood seizes you, with no clear idea as to what any of it is about.
Reading for Definite Data
Turning from reading in general to the specialised reading I have suggested—the first heading explains itself. Many subjects that you write upon will require a certain amount of preliminary reading—some a great deal—in order that you may accumulate facts, or get the details of climate and scenery correct, or the mode of life prevalent at a specified time.