Caleb Smith, <i>Thoreau's Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture</i>

Distraction and Discipline in American Culture, the author, identifying the logic of control and discipline lurking in Hannah More's 1832 Book of Private Devotion, writes of the seductive quality of her religious doctrine of self-culture: "Beguilingly, too," he writes, "it blurs the line between pastoral care and personal responsibility.It makes you the custodian of your own impressible self" (182).Struck by the poetry of this line, and by Smith's deft analysis of More's aesthetic and spiritual stance, I found myself mulling it over as I cleaned my kitchen, anxiously checked the news, responded (apologetically and belatedly) to texts and emails, and moved the laundry to the dryer.