"Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment"
About this Quote
Lamb skewers the newspaper as a machine that manufactures appetite faster than it can supply nourishment. The first sentence flatters the form: curiosity is the paper's native drug, the daily tease that turns private lives and public affairs into a serialized cliffhanger. Then he twists the knife. You put it down disappointed not because nothing happened, but because the paper has trained you to expect more happening than any finite column can deliver.
The intent is less to condemn journalism than to diagnose a habit of mind: information as stimulus, not understanding. Lamb, a critic writing in a Britain where newspapers were booming alongside urban gossip and political agitation, is watching print culture create a new rhythm of attention - quick, repetitive, slightly feverish. The paper arrives as promise: today you will be let in. You finish it and feel the old itch return, as if the world has already moved on without you. Disappointment becomes proof of engagement.
The subtext is slyly moral without sounding sermonized. Curiosity, in Lamb's hands, isn't noble inquiry; it's restless surveillance. The newspaper doesn't simply report events, it cultivates the reader's sense that there must be a secret, a scandal, a turning point just out of frame. Even the satisfactions it offers are structured as near-misses.
It works because Lamb captures a psychological loop modern media still runs on: anticipation, consumption, letdown, repeat. The line is a small satire of the public sphere - a crowd gathered around ink, forever promised closure, forever sent back to wanting.
The intent is less to condemn journalism than to diagnose a habit of mind: information as stimulus, not understanding. Lamb, a critic writing in a Britain where newspapers were booming alongside urban gossip and political agitation, is watching print culture create a new rhythm of attention - quick, repetitive, slightly feverish. The paper arrives as promise: today you will be let in. You finish it and feel the old itch return, as if the world has already moved on without you. Disappointment becomes proof of engagement.
The subtext is slyly moral without sounding sermonized. Curiosity, in Lamb's hands, isn't noble inquiry; it's restless surveillance. The newspaper doesn't simply report events, it cultivates the reader's sense that there must be a secret, a scandal, a turning point just out of frame. Even the satisfactions it offers are structured as near-misses.
It works because Lamb captures a psychological loop modern media still runs on: anticipation, consumption, letdown, repeat. The line is a small satire of the public sphere - a crowd gathered around ink, forever promised closure, forever sent back to wanting.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|
More Quotes by Charles
Add to List
