“Slow Reading”

Richard Lanham:

Before prose rhythm can be sensibly considered, one must redefine reading. It cannot be a jet flight coast-to coast. It must be a slow walk in the country, taken, as all such walks should be, partly for the walking itself. Every course in composition ought to be a course in Slow Reading.

Style: An Anti-Textbook, 2nd. ed. (Philadelphia, Paul Dry Books, 2007).

Also from this book
Writing and speech
“The deepest motive for writing”

[Lanham has also written a genuine textbook, Revising Prose (2007), immensely helpful and ridiculously expensive. (Thanks, Pearson). A sentence from that book has been running through my head for years. A presentation of the book’s core, the Paramedic Method of revision, may be found at Purdue OWL. Scroll down or you’ll think you’ve hit an empty page.]