Interest in and patience with long, complex books and poems have alarmingly diminished not only among college students but college faculty in the US. It is difficult to imagine American students today, even at elite universities, gathering impromptu at midnight for a passionate discussion of big, challenging literary works like Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov — a scene I witnessed in a recreation room strewn with rock albums at my college dormitory in upstate New York in 1965.

The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age (2004)