nonreader

Still the hardest part for any adult nonreader is to acknowledge the problem.

"This is not a book written by a nonreader."

A nonreader can follow the atmospheric and charming story with ease.

Another nonreader who had problems with menus always asked the waiter what the specials were.

Try explaining a Rene Magritte in-joke to your friend the nonreader.

The minute you run a program it completely dispels the myth that an infant is unwelcome in the library or, for that matter, a nonreader.

"I know a nonreader on Long Island who owns a restaurant and can't read his own menus," Mr. Chiappetta said.

John Reynolds Gardiner, an avowed nonreader throughout his childhood who became a best-selling children's book author, died on March 4 in Anaheim, Calif.

Before he died in December 1986, Mr. MacDonald wrote an essay on the subject that consists of a dialogue between McGee and his friend, Meyer, on "the terrible isolation of the nonreader."

And the artist, a Czechoslovak emigre who in the few years he has lived in New York has illustrated many books, has made sure that there are still special rewards for a nonreader's sharp, searching eye.

I doubt if even those who used the notion really believed it, but maybe it was true, and is still true-insofar as any reader is at least superior in at least one way to almost any nonreader.

But in all the other comments I ever got about "Moon-rise," not one complained about not understanding Dorothy's story; so I imagine that the average reader of fantasy is better educated than even a college-graduate nonreader.

Lest the reader, or the nonreader, think that Bayard underestimates the power of reading, he proposes that we are all essentially literary constructs, defined by our own inner libraries: the books we ve read, skimmed and heard about.