Word: reader
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...Reader's Digest (1,100 ad pages): $57,918,449-down...
...case of dire need, when characters fail to move and ideas remain hopelessly mired, many an author falls back on a reliable device. He hauls his characters (and the reader) into church, and there, cloaked in clerical robes, delivers a sermon that sets everybody straight on what the novel is about. By extraordinary coincidence, literary sermons are always marvelously germane: no hero-wretch taken in adultery is ever made to sit through a discourse on the nature of the Holy Ghost...
Sylvia tries to help during family collisions but is rebuffed. She feels sorry and confused and so does the reader. Then, with nearly 200 pages turned, comes the sermon. It is a fine sermon, delivered by a wise old Scots preacher. on the folly of hoping to win God's grace by heaping up worldly goods or worldly good works. "Aye, Annie," the preacher mimics, "I've been aye doing so muckle guid, I've noe had time to set me down and mind...
...modern reader is attuned instantly; a search for identity is in progress. But it is a disappointing search. Sylvia's identity is not very interesting, even to herself. Another hundred pages of collisions and rebuffs is got through before Sylvia (her identity evidently found) shrugs and decides to move out. The reader feels like giving a cheer...
RUSSIA AT WAR, 1941-45, by Alexander Werth. The reader has to dig for them, but there are rewards in Werth's vast work, the first complete history in English of this titanic struggle...