Brian Goes to Syracuse: Thomas Jefferson versus literature

Brian offers a good quotation from Thomas Jefferson on (loosely interpreted) the graduate student's version of temptation (novel-reading) at Brian Goes to Syracuse: Thomas Jefferson versus literature. As a fiction writer, I am inclined to think that Jefferson was writing in a state of political delirium. Then again, as an art historian, I rather like to imagine a painting along the lines of the standard theme of the Temptations of St. Anthony, only with a haggard graduate student sitting in a cell surrounded by volumes of unread Foucault, Derrida, Žižek and the like, while enticing paperbacks by Toni Morrison, Robertson Davies, and Dorothy Sayers float about in the sky or throw themselves in front of the sufferer. (If I were better with Photoshop and had nothing else to do, this would be fun to construct.)

Grunewald's version of the Temptation of St. Anthony, from the Isenheim Altarpiece. What I've never understood is why saints might really find the average demon (as depicted by Northern Renaissance artists like Grunewald, Bosch, and company) particularly enticing, especially when, as here, the demons look pretty threatening. Then again, the demons are always interesting looking.