jeblog

reading at risk

It was great to see so many folks come out for the Reading at Risk panel discussion at the University of Maryland last week. Can we assume that all those folks are literary readers? If so, it would be a hopeful sign.

But then, I must ask, as many did during the discussion, what exactly do we mean by "literary reader"? What do we mean by "literature"? What do we mean by "reading"? These are contested (and even politicized) terms, to say the least. There seems to be something of a bias, on the part of the National Endowment for the Arts (author of the "Reading at Risk" report) that reading that is not "literary" is not really "reading" (excluding such things as creative non-fiction). And that if something read online does not lead one to read, say, Shakespeare (or one of those other dead white males), then it is not really reading. Which means that reading the "Reading at Risk" report is not really reading either (despite the creative efforts of Nick Montfort, one of the panelists, to characterize it, and other government reports, as literary).

But then I don't agree with those who dismiss the report because of its sometimes questionable methodology. There seemed to be a lot of quibbling, and some denial, going on amongst the panel and the audience. The general conclusions of the report are fairly convincing and stark: people in the United States (especially the young) don't read much, and what they do read is not particularly edifying, and this spells trouble for an informed electorate.

Three main follow-up points I would like to make:

1. The drop-off in literary reading may be do to too much, rather than too little, textuality going on. It would seem to me, given the fact that many more of us do our our work via computer, and are thus reading all the time, that the lack of literary reading is often due to reading fatigue. At least that is the case with me. Once I'm done with work (and finish blogging!), I don't want to curl up with a literary work, especially those that make me work too hard (this means you, Salman Rushdie). I grab genre fiction (science fiction, mysteries) if I grab anything book-like at all.

2. It is way too early in the game to say to dismiss online or digital writing as ersatz literature, at best. I would think the odds are pretty good that of the many new artforms present online, some of them will one day produce works of art we might eventually consider the equal of Oscar Wilde or Virginia Woolf.

3. I think we should make the effort to preserve literature in book format. The book is a marvelous invention and we should encourage folks to engage it as such, rather than guilting non-readers for not reading "literature." I also think that as a contemplative tool, and as a portal to virtual space, books are vital and necessary.

So yes let's champion digital media/arts, but let's not forget the blandishments of books!

My thanks to Matt Kirschenbaum and the Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities for organizing this event. And to the National Endowment for the Arts for their report and for caring.

And for those who'd like to actually reading "Reading at Risk", here's the URL:

http://www.arts.gov/pub/ReadingAtRisk.pdf

Posted by jeb at November 22, 2004 10:33 PM | TrackBack