A few days removed from the AP-Ispos survey on reading (or not) in America and John Freeman\u2019s response to this, there are a couple of reactions and ideas that have stuck with me and, I think, are worth fleshing out a bit.<\/p>\n
First off, John Freeman\u2019s take is not perfect. Obviously, the Reading Room in Las Vegas is a great store (with a buyer in Irma Wolfson who is definitely dedicated to representing great international literature), and the entire issue of whether we read or not, why, and what the lasting consequences are, is a lot more complicated than how Freeman represents it.<\/p>\n
That said, it\u2019s definitely easier to attack someone online than it is to take a stand for something, which is what makes blogs both fun to read and easy to dismiss. So yes, people on the 6 train in New York read books, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that reading plays well in Peoria. (Trust me, it doesn’t.) And it always seems that whenever someone pushes for a greater appreciation of quality literature, a genre writer jumps up screaming about how that\u2019s elitist.<\/p>\n
But none of these comments advance the discussion of the issue—or even address whether there is an issue or not, which is a valid question since another way of representing the finding that 27% of Americans didn\u2019t read a book last year is to state that almost three-fourths of Americans actually did. Which, far from ideal, still isn\u2019t bad.<\/p>\n
My thoughts are purely anecdotal and based on my experiences working in bookstores, in publishing, and at a university, and living—for almost the past decade—in cities devoid of really great bookstores. (Even in Rochester when it comes to new books the only places to shop are a few poorly stocked B&N\u2019s and two fairly decent Borders stores.) Anyway, one of the things that I think underlies these proclamations about America\u2019s reading habits (including the NEA<\/span> Reading at Risk one) is that today\u2019s book culture has become much more about buying instead of about reading and appreciating.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not accessible online, but back in Issue #2 of CONTEXT<\/i> magazine, author and editor Peter Dimock wrote a fascinating article called \u201cThe Presence of Reading.\u201d In this piece, he wrote about his time working in academic marketing at Vintage and the idea that books should be designed a certain way so that customers felt like they had received literary knowledge simply purchasing the book—reading it was totally secondary. Thinking about the Vintage editions of Faulkner that I have at home, I can totally understand what they were shooting for . . .<\/p>\n Although it\u2019s silly and somewhat depressing, a lot of books are sold everyday because they\u2019re titles one \u201cshould have,\u201d or that someone heard about on NPR<\/span> and feels like they should be \u201cpart of the conversation.\u201d It\u2019s human nature, and even if I know I\u2019m not going to read a book for years, there are times I buy it, \u201cjust to have it around.\u201d <\/p>\n Commercial publishers are in the business to make money, and to market books in such a way that encourages buyers—but not necessarily readers—to pick them up is their prerogative. That doesn\u2019t mean we all have to like it though.<\/p>\n A bigger issue though is the fact that aside from a handful of exception, truly great works of literature—no matter how great the packaging—can\u2019t sustain multimillion dollar companies. Nor can they sustain great bookstores. Popular mainstream books are more appropriate to that role, and these books require a different sort of marketing strategy. No matter how big of fans they are, there aren\u2019t many people who feel that books by authors like John Grisham, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, etc. contain great wisdom, and that simply by owning them you become a better person. <\/p>\n Summer reading, beach books\u2014everyone from the publishers to booksellers to reviewers treats these sorts of books as bound entertainment. Reading a 400-page book can be hours and hours of fun! This underlying sentiment that books are the equivalent of a movie or TV show runs throughout the book business and drives many decisions. Conversations about a title\u2019s sales potential rarely revolve around how intellectually stimulating a book is\u2014it\u2019s all about the plot, the pitch, the way these books could become big screen successes.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to say that reading isn\u2019t enjoyable\u2014for someone who spends a considerable amount of time reading novels, I sure hope it is\u2014but reading has some additional benefits that American Idol<\/i> and Superbad<\/i> just don\u2019t. What those benefits are is debatable—better moral values, a greater understanding of an individual\u2019s place in the world, exposure to different cultures, an appreciation of art—but it\u2019s definitely there, and to pretend that a book is just as entertaining as TV—and not much else—is simply wrong and has potentially devastating consequences.<\/p>\n If you totally buy into the hype, the ads, the glowing reviews, the 15-foot stacks at the bookstore entrance, and expect something as entertaining as 24<\/i> you\u2019re probably going to end up disappointed. Sure, this is a grandiose statement, but in the end, I think I\u2019m right. Lifelong readers love to read because they get something else out of reading that they can\u2019t get elsewhere. And if books are being published-promoted-reviewed-sold for entertainment value alone, new writers will become less and less interesting to people like me.<\/p>\n This also isn\u2019t to say that there isn\u2019t a healthy group of people reading serious literature, or that it isn\u2019t being produced. There always has been and probably always will be a segment of the population seeking out great literature. Books that are doing things unique to the medium, presenting information, viewpoints, etc., in ways that can\u2019t be found on TV. People who love Julio Cortazar\u2019s books. <\/p>\n What I am saying is that that the overall structure of the current situation doesn\u2019t necessarily encourage this type of reading and appreciation of literature. Like with most industries, we\u2019re dialed in to being consumers first, into buying the next hot thing rather than cherishing something beautifully complicated. And regardless of how elitist and\/or naive this may sound, I stand by my belief that there\u2019s nothing wrong with wishing more people would read and love high literary works.<\/p>\n There are good and bad things happening in today’s book culture playing into this situation. The fact that book review sections are shrinking is disturbing, if only because it means that the value our culture places in books coverage isn’t a given. Thankfully, the internet is picking up the slack in a lot of ways, making it easier to find out about great books that often don\u2019t get a lot of play because they don\u2019t sound \u201centertaining.” <\/p>\n I don\u2019t think that the aforementioned studies point to a doomsday scenario in which 20 years from now no one is reading, and I also don\u2019t think that no matter how much Freeman complains or others try and paint an optimistic picture we\u2019re ever going to live in a world where everyone\u2019s read Ulysses<\/i>. And that\u2019s fine. More than likely, everything\u2019s going to stay exactly the same. Books will exist, there will be the same old conflicts between commerce and art, and the same old results—some readers finding out about great lit through bloggers, reviewers, booksellers, and sharing information about great literature with one another, while the vast majority of readers are all reading the same soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture book that \u201ceveryone\u201d is talking about. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few days removed from the AP-Ispos survey on reading (or not) in America and John Freeman\u2019s response to this, there are a couple of reactions and ideas that have stuck with me and, I think, are worth fleshing out a bit.<\/p>\n First off, John Freeman\u2019s take is not perfect. Obviously, the Reading Room in Las Vegas is a great store (with a buyer in Irma Wolfson who is definitely dedicated to representing great international literature), and the entire issue of whether we read or not, why, and what the lasting consequences are, is a lot more complicated than how Freeman represents it.<\/p>\n That said, it\u2019s definitely easier to attack someone online than it is to take a stand for something, which is what makes blogs both fun to read and easy to dismiss. So yes, people on the 6 train in New York read books, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that reading plays well in Peoria. (Trust me, it doesn’t.) And it always seems that whenever someone pushes for a greater appreciation of quality literature, a genre writer jumps up screaming about how that\u2019s elitist.<\/p>\n But none of these comments advance the discussion of the issue—or even address whether there is an issue or not, which is a valid question since another way of representing the finding that 27% of Americans didn\u2019t read a book last year is to state that almost three-fourths of Americans actually did. Which, far from ideal, still isn\u2019t bad.<\/p>\n My thoughts are purely anecdotal and based on my experiences working in bookstores, in publishing, and at a university, and living\u2014for almost the past decade\u2014in cities devoid of really great bookstores. (Even in Rochester when it comes to new books the only places to shop are a few poorly stocked B&N\u2019s and two fairly decent Borders stores.) Anyway, one of the things that I think underlies these proclamations about America\u2019s reading habits (including the NEA<\/span> Reading at Risk one) is that today\u2019s book culture has become much more about buying instead of about reading and appreciating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[1836,586,1646],"class_list":["post-255236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-cwp","tag-future-of-the-book","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328386,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255236\/revisions\/328386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}