I knew academic writing was different than trade writing, but I was unprepared for the way reading—and consequently writing—was treated in the context of academia.

Douglas Hunter, “Book Breaking and Book Mending.”

Most essays lamenting the ways graduate school deforms minds and bodies focus on bad academic writing. Hunter considers how it habituates the ways we read. Academic reading fuels production not pleasure or transformation. I certainly find the training difficult to undo. I read for nuggets, arguments, metaphors, evidence, sources––Bestand to repurpose for my own thinking and writing. I can defend such a readerly disposition. But I long for the ability to toggle from this academic way of reading to others . . .and then back.