Noted sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin weighs in on what she calls the “alleged decline of reading” in a feature essay in the February issue of Harper’s. The article begins with a predictable litany of lamentable reading stats, but then takes the debate in a whole new direction, squaring the blame for reading’s decline on publishers, not readers.

Books are social vectors, but publishers have been slow to see it. They barely even noticed book clubs until Oprah goosed them. But then the stupidity of the contemporary, corporation-owned publishing company is fathomless: they think they can sell books as commodities.

The essay, available only to subscribers, is equally sharp, witty, and angry throughout, though Le Guin’s conclusion that we’d all be better off if “corporate” publishers dumped their literary imprints does seem a little rash. Still, her rhetoric is fine, rabble-rousing stuff.