06/11/2026
The joy of reading never goes out of style.
As he prepares to teach Literary Criticism in Spring 2027, Matt Wanat, professor of English at OHIO Lancaster, is spending his summer immersed in books and ideas that have shaped generations of readers.
"I prep year-round, reading and rereading nearly constantly. It is pleasurable work, I admit. Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (1957) (see: tinyurl.com/2uch9nfz) is a now-classic work of literary criticism that examines the novel as an emerging dominant genre in the eighteenth century. Prior to those eighteenth-century novels, there were precedents in longform narrative, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel became an enormously popular media genre.“
Wanat continues, "The novel remains popular but has many media competitors these days. In the twentieth-century--even as global literacy rates reached an all-time high--film, radio, television, photography, team sports, and travel by automobile and plane presented options that cut into public time spent leisure reading. Then, of course, came the internet."
"As a scholar of both literature and film, I am loath to disparage the latter for the popular decline of the former, but the value of simply settling in with a long book, sans interruptions, is I think without question,” said Wanat. "Still, even though contemptus mundi is a frequent "best seller," rather than decry the state of reading and the world, I will just say that the pleasures and creative and intellectual rewards I get from reading are among the most important in my life.”
Wanat stopped by the Hannah V. McCauley whiteboard to take this candid shot. He is grateful for the existence of libraries, bookstores, and good books.
A reminder to just keep reading...just keep reading.
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