NP All about us. From In Defense of Naive Reading, NYT, today

[Robin Landseadel]

On Oct 11, 2010, at 11:21 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

>> Knowing as much as possible about the social world it was written  
>> for, about the
>> author’s other works, his or her contemporaries, and so forth, can  
>> be very
>> helpful.
>
> Or it can be a distraction.

So can the relentless hammering at a single -- perhaps not especially  
relevant --  feature of an author's ouvre, particularly if the author  
displays an obvious concern for "the social world it was written for."

If they can get you asking the wrong questions . . .