And today I see an article in Harper's by the author and literary critic Ursula K. Le Guin who argues the same thing:
I also want to question the assumption—whether gloomy or faintly gloating—that books are on the way out. I think they’re here to stay. It’s just that not all that many people ever did read them. Why should we think everybody ought to now?
Perhaps this is the new spin to stop all the stories about the decline of reading. Unfortunately the article is for subscribers only, and I'm not a subscriber, so I didn't get more than 2 paragraphs into the article for her to lay it out more fully.
But I think that it is safe to say that at one point people did read more. Flash back to pre-radio days and I would venture that they read a good deal more. Radio probably cut into the percentage of Americans who read and television and film probably really cut into it. I'm sure it has leveled off since, although the rise of the Internet has almost certainly got people reading more again, just not books.
What's interesting is that theater and books were probably both hurt by television and film but for different reasons.
Theater was hurt because it suddenly lost on the economies of scale and couldn't compete for a family's "entertainment dollar." Enough people chose not to go to the theater that it closed the theaters, and suddenly no one got to go to the theater.
Books aren't like that. Books are hurt by the fact that reading one takes 10 hours, that they can have dense, confusing parts (unlike television), and that, in contrast to sitcoms, can seem relatively boring.
All that is to say, in the last 50 years, I would venture that Chabon and Le Guin are right: reading has probably not declined substantially. But in the last 150 years, I'm sure it has plummeted.
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It's all a question of perspective I guess; I've always read, but I think I started to read a lot more when I reached my late teens.
Has reading plummeted over the last 150 years? I don't know about the US, but I'm under the impression that literacy levels in the UK have risen in the last century, so surely there would have been fewer people who could actually read.
Also, consider: there are more individuals in this generation of children than there were in the generation who were kids 50 years ago, hence we have more classes now. If the same proportion of kids in a class are readers then that still means an increase in the number of individuals who read regularly.
It's first thing in the morning, and I might be approaching that with faulty logic, but in the absence of statistics and fact(oid)s to back me up, that's all I've got! :)
Hello Erik,
I found the picture of the windmill from your article 'Inherit the Wind', dated 28.09.2006. Found it through a Google picture search. I've made this poster using the picture. Now the community group I am with wants to advertise this environmental fair we'll be running in May this year.
I need to ask you for permission though. Is it up to you, or is the picture owned by someone else?
Thanks
Guy, London, UK
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