I’ve long been disheartened by the downward spiral in the number of Americans who read, and an article in The Washington Post this summer further fueled my dismay.
Fewer than 15 percent of American males, it said, read for leisure on a daily basis. (Women are at 29.) Only 43 percent of all Americans took in a novel, short story, poem, or play in the past year. And lest we think that those 43 percent are reading stimulating and illuminating works of literature, the Post stated that more than half of adults who read choose young adult literature as their primary genre.
In my off-the-farm job, the following encounter is depressingly common: A young couple strolls into a bookstore — okay, shuffles in, feet barely lifting against the pull of gravity — and the female dully inquires after the latest zombie (ghost, vampire, superhuman) romance.
While she is off examining the possibilities for stimulating the remaining portion of a once active parietal lobe, I turn to the male and ask the question for which I already know the answer. “What do you like to read?” I say to the hoodie-cloaked figure before me. He looks up, surprised. As his brain slowly digests the content of my complex question, a look of disgust spreads over his face. I’ve somehow insulted him by suggesting that he might be among the realm of the literate. How uncool is that, man. He shakes his head and returns to his natural state, eyes lowered and locked into The Device.
I am not amused. This republic of ours cannot flourish, cannot survive, without an actively literate citizenry. It is not enough to read only young adult or genre novels. We need to exercise our remarkable gift of reading with a thorough workout each day. Otherwise, we get the politicians that we have today, left or right.
The problem with a small, obscure blog like this is that the message goes out to you, the readers. It preaches to the choir, as it were. It is not within this blog’s scope or power to correct this aliterate trajectory. And I really don’t know how, if it is possible or even desirable, to reach those who don’t read. Peak literacy has passed. I feel, these days, like an anachronism, muttering something about “cultivating one’s own garden” — only to have some think I coined the phrase.
(Sigh.) Time to go out and do some real work … in my own garden.
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Reading this weekend: The Vanishing American Adult (Sasse), which hasn’t helped my outlook today.
What saddens me is that folks who don’t read much or widely miss the pleasure of living with interesting words. I usually have multiple books going at once, works written in a variety of eras and genres. This leads to having words in my vocabulary which I take for granted but can sometimes provoke a bemused response when I use them (recent example: “rucked up”). It’s also sweet to witness delighted recognition of a particular word from a fellow (often elder) word lover. These words just pop into my head, and I can’t always explain what they mean without looking them up. But I have an intuitive sense of the meaning, which I imagine comes from experiencing them in context while reading.
Currently reading: The Compass Rose (Le Guin, 1982); Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm (Buhner, 2014); Enlightenment: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Isham, 2013)
Current evening read-aloud at our house: How to Change Your Mind (Pollan, 2018)
People may not be living with interesting words, but at least they are living in interesting times. (I like how that proverb spread through North America.)
Peak Literacy has been reached. Peak Music. And at least one other; I can’t seem to remember what that was about, but I’m pretty sure that like Peak Music it happened in 2005.
Brian, I think I own two hoodies. How about I don one and surprise you: “Why, I’m reading the Antifederalist Papers, Sir!”
I’d like that, Michael. The problem with conjuring an image is you often hit a stereotype. Full disclosure: I too have a hoody. But, I seldom use it to hide from the world. And, I have several young friends whose reading habits far surpass mine. Always exceptions to the rule…but, the rule is winning.
BTW we picked up some Chestnuts (Dunstans) to plant, $6 for 3 gallon pot. not too shabby.
We should definitely be planting them all over Europe, too. We need all the timber species diversity we can get.
Just a thought: Someone should invite Patrick Deneen and JMG to discuss ‘Religion And The End Of The (Current) World’.
Wow. PD vs JMG. At Caesar’s Palace?? Front Porch Republic folk could get discounted tickets? Advertising poster illustration with the Fighting Irish leprechaun facing off against a druid. How do you come up with this stuff?
I’m at sea, Michael and Clem. Not sure who Deneen is…Or, the connection with JMG? I’ll leave it to you two to sort out the guest list. 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqhvQckzxvY
The other two we don’t really need; too little leprechaunness (or Irishness?)
Deneen has contributed to FPR I believe – but his faculty position at Notre Dame is why I used the leprechaun imagery… not trying to suggest Patrick is diminutive.
Didn’t stick around to watch the whole video Michael linked – but did notice Jonah Goldberg as one of the two “others”. Not sure what Jonah’s pugilistic cred might be, but he writes a conservative column and his wife is a speech writer of some note. Lots of thinkers… and hopefully no real punches being thrown.
So turn the ship around and head back to port.
Safely in port, thanks.
I think JMG would probably be opening by asking Deneen about his (religion’s) unhealthy obsession with other people’s sexuality (vide his last Dreamwidth entry), and then things would go smoothly from there.
Sarah,
Thanks for sharing. I really like that you are reading aloud in the house. We typically read, in the winter months, from a poetry anthology to each other. One or two choices before bed.
Still working my way through the Icelandic Sagas, a couple of farming texts, and the Sasse book.
Nightly poetry sounds lovely, Brian. About preaching to the choir: sometimes the choir needs inspiration to keep the song going. Thank you for that. -Sarah
Thanks, Sarah.
Brian,
I can still recall when I fell in love with books. I was 12 and I had been hospitalized with double pneumonia. Someone gave me a book, the first in the Trixie Belden series “The Secret of the Mansion”. I was hooked, eventually I read the entire series. My mother would complain that I always had my nose buried in a book, but she was also an avid reader. Over the years I have found many authors who became my favorites and I enjoy collecting their books. I’ve gone from reading mostly fiction to mostly non-fiction. Three years ago we moved in a home that has a room with wall to wall built-in book shelves and I finally have that library I always wanted.
It is indeed sad to think how few people today find value in reading. They don’t realize that they are missing one of the greatest pleasures and most valuable skills humans have, to be literate. Who can resist being transported to another world, to escape problems we can’t fix, to hear the wisdom of writers speaking to us from the pages of a book. Indeed, it is sad to think that humanity may be losing one of its greatest advancements.
I’m currently reading “Democracy in Chains” by Nancy MacLean and “The Call of Earth” by Orson Scott Card. Mornings are for non-fiction. Evenings are for fiction.
Jody, My older sister collected the Nancy Drew, my older brother, the Hardy Boys. So, I collected all of the Three Investigator books as boy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Investigators. I used to get the flu each winter and be out of school for at least two weeks. I had a great time, between bouts of throwing-up, rereading that series. Rascal, and, Rifles for Watie, were also sickbed favorites.
We moved a lot and I went to a new school almost every year as a kid, so my urban summers were fairly solitary and I spent a lot of time reading. My first series was The Happy Hollisters. My maternal grandmother was a librarian before she married, and there were a lot of books at her house. I used to read (or skim) titles picked at random from her bookshelves, so I was exposed to adult books early on. I do plenty of “serious” reading now, but fiction is my relaxation, and a good speculative fiction series is a favorite pleasure. There are several I reread periodically after enough years have passed that I can’t remember the specifics of the plots. Jody, Card’s Homecoming Saga probably fits in that category for me.
Are we the dinosaurs, or could we possibly be harbingers of some hopeful distant future where the consequences of peak oil thrust us back to a time and technology where books once again offer something to compete for our interest?
The Device (an apt appellation he says, alliteratively) is far easier to employ to absorb one’s attention. Without boob tubes and “smart” phones, one has to take a bit more interest in their entertainment. Thus book reading may well return if all the whiz-bang thingies turn out to require more resources than we can justify for their production. The next question in my mind then is how long until such a scenario? Will we live long enough to witness a book renaissance?
As for me and my family, we will read.
On a tangent – and with this I hope to offer some solace – Writing hasn’t fared all that well in this age of lapse in reading either. So perhaps for now you do us all the favor of writing something… even if:
The problem with a small, obscure blog like this is that the message goes out to you, the readers. It preaches to the choir, as it were. It is not within this blog’s scope or power to correct this alliterate trajectory.
Perhaps not within its power… but certainly within its dreams and aspirations. And I’ve heard that dreams can come true. [or did I read that somewhere??]
Ah, what a good time to be reading ‘Twilight’s Last Gleaming’; written in 2014, it contains election “specialities”, an investigation by someone called Muller and an official saying of a head of state that when they’re in a room together, he feels like the only adult in said room. Don’t these Beltway people read ANY other books but JMG’s?
(One even more important detail of the book’s plot can’t be given away, coming even closer to current events.)
My library is comprehensive enough to sustain, Clem, at least a small farm future community.
There was once a bookseller named Art
Who mused as he pushed the book cart
Too few read these days ‘tis a shame
Too many consider it lame
But I’ll keep at this to just do my part
This writer we now know as Alice
Was writing alone in her palace
Is this endeavor a waste of my time?
Should I garden and raise my own thyme?
But I’ve words I must pour from my chalice
Then comes a reader we’ve known as Brian
Selling books was a business he’s tryin’
He had sympathies for his buddy Art
And knew well about doing one’s part
What he needed was the heart of a lion.
This lion feels more kinship with the one in Wizard of Oz.
I was thinking Mufasa from the Lion King, but the Wiz’ lion might serve… says the Scarecrow (if I only had a brain).
I wrote a blog post on this topic in 2008 (The Waning of the Typographic Mind) and updated it in 2018. No positive news to report, just more hand-wringing. Media of all sorts have become increasingly adept at targeting and controlling attention. Brief, hyperpalatable inputs where one just sits and let something questionably pleasing wash over the passive self outcompete prolonged activities (!) such as reading, but there will mostly likely always be those who recognize text as a better transmitter of meaning than video.
I do worry about the overall industry devoted to that transmission line. True, industries remake themselves all the time, or, disappear entirely. But, the transmission of editorial skills, proofreading, printing, distribution is all perhaps more fragile than one could hope, not to mention the source of all that effort. Does it take both the reader and the publishing industry to sustain a literate culture? Although, today, it must be said, I saw evidence that the industry isn’t doing much to aid their cause: A Trump coloring book, being remaindered, with “T” dropped into all the iconic American paintings and statues. Was it intended to amuse the anti-Trump crowd, inspire the pro-Trump crowd? Offend the tree sacrificed to print such drivel?
I know why adults, even old ones like me, are reading YA books. The books are good! I dearly love Nancy Farmer, Gary Paulsen (Francis Tucket series and “Harris and Me”), Eoin Colfer, Suzanne Collins, and a few more. The stories are good, the action moves right along, and I am neither bored nor worn down with depression and gray weariness. Robert Cormier’s YA books are stressful but good so I make an exception for him. Several years ago I introduced my then young nephew to Gary Paulsen. He returned the favor by introducing me to Eoin Colfer. With advancing age my eyes tire before I’m well into a book so I listen to audiobooks more than I read. When Books on Tape and Blackstone Audio closed up shop a world of wonderful audiobooks disappeared (everything Robert Graves wrote and all narrated by the wonderful David Case, fine histories, and memoirs such as “Quartered Safe Out Here.” I will never get over my grief for that loss.
Joan, you make a nice case for young adult. Audiobooks, well read, are our modern equivalent to sitting around the fire and being told stories. Not a bad way to spend the evening.
Audiobooks get a lot of housework done and, more importantly, generate home baked cakes, bread, and pies! They help with knitting as well but I’m a better baker than I am a knitter. While I’m off in Rome with the Caesars, the cakes just keep coming out of the oven. The best thing ever
Audiobooks generate home baked cakes, bread, and pies! I’m off in Rome with the Caesars and the baked goods just seem to magically happen. LOL
My mother read to us from books when we were young, taught us to read before kindergarten, and always made gifts of books at birthdays and Christmas (always inscribed, making it your very own book and no one else’s). Early library memberships also. TV time was restricted.
I’m old now. You have to acknowledge that many of today’s parents, and even the parents of today’s hoodies, have/had less time to invest similarly. Stories (and music) are most often consumed from sources that are primarily visual, robbing the “consumers” of the opportunity to imagine their own “visual” interpretations and even experience their own emotional responses, rather than those of the producers of the source. In addition to your perceived declining standard of bookshop traffic, one might also remark on the low probability of seeing the same folks in a decent audio equipment store (which are also becoming scarcer).
Ah, the restrictions on TV use. We were heavily restricted, mainly to the evening news. I always felt lost at school as my fellow students talked about the latest escapade by Fonzie. In hindsight, not too bad of a childhood.