According to a recent AP poll, 25% of Americans didn’t read a book in the last year. Over at the Guardian Books Blog, it’s posited that capitalism is to blame for the mass aversion to the printed page that so many Americans seem to have developed. I think that’s an oversimplification of what’s really going on. To be sure, reading–and I want to emphasize that we’re talking about books here–has never been a popular American pastime. Credit the vociferous anti-intellectualism that took root here as soon as the Puritans dropped anchor. Credit the agrarian economy that dominated the first half of the nation’s history (reading can’t be a priority when there are crops to be sown). Books might have become mass entertainment if the industrial revolution hadn’t been immediately followed by the advent of radio and then television.
Some might point out that the Web and videogames and television turned people away from books. Maybe. Perhaps technology finally reached a point where it could satiate a human brain hungry for visual stimulation. Why make the effort to process words into images when the TV is sitting right there, ready to mainline all kinds of pretty pictures into our cerebral cortexes? The siren call of the TV is hardwired into our neural pathways. The decline of reading is just as much about biology as anything else.
But books and the reading of books will survive. Despite the best efforts of a broken educational system and a mass culture that is becoming ever more hyper-visual, a significant minority of people–yes, even Americans–will continue to take refuge and solace in books. A certain kind of person will cling to the permanence of the stories and ideas presented in books as a way to keep one’s bearings in an age of ephemera and disposability.
It’s worth remembering that some of that 25% doesn’t know how to read–and another portion doesn’t have access to books in their own language of literacy–and some can read, but not with pleasure, because when they went to school there was no one to notice that they had dyslexia or another learning disability, and they still muddled through, but never got the support they needed to be leisure readers. Now add in the folks who have significant late-life vision loss, enough that reading is impossible or uncomfortable for long stretches. Adding those four groups together, it wouldn’t be hard to make quite a dent in that 25%, without blaming television, the internet, etc.
Books and I have had a verrry long term relationship. The mantra when I was a child was ‘you’ll never be bored if you can find a book to read-so go find a book…’so I have become one of those who ‘cling to the permanence of stories and ideas’ that you so aptly described.
All of the little kids in my life gets books from me. Their parents feel that all can be found on the internet – I reply, but they can’t sneak a read with a flashlight, under the covers, to find out what happens next. Oh yeah – I also pass out neat little flashlights once in a while. The kids love it – their parents think I am an anachronism.
Thanks for the fantastic post, Mark!
From what this American has read, the past time, reading books, was all the rage in late colonial times in America.