{"id":1512,"date":"2004-08-05T11:00:39","date_gmt":"2004-08-05T15:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/08\/05\/do-we-read-enough-in-book-form-that"},"modified":"2004-08-05T11:00:39","modified_gmt":"2004-08-05T15:00:39","slug":"do-we-read-enough-in-book-form-that-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/08\/05\/do-we-read-enough-in-book-form-that-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we read enough? In book form, that is?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Dirda, of the Washington Post, has a fabulous screed about the
\nrecent NEA report on the state of reading in America<\/a>.  It’s a bit
\nover the top, but still quite apropos.
\n <\/p>\n

\n

[Study author and poet Dana] Gioia thinks it unlikely that any “careful observer of
\ncontemporary American society will be greatly surprised” at this news.
\nSetting aside the question of whether I’m a careful observer or not, I
\nwas in fact a little surprised: To me, the numbers seemed better than
\nexpected. But then, to my mind, the real literacy crisis has less to do
\nwith the number of people reading than with the narrowing range of
\nbooks that Americans actually read.<\/p>\n

According to the report, all of “one in six people
\nreads 12 or more books in a year.” Half the population doesn’t look at
\nany fiction, poetry or plays, ever. This is, obviously, just pathetic.
\nYet how many times have I been in elegant homes where I found lavish
\nentertainment centers, walls of DVDs, state-of-the-art computer systems
\n— and not a single book, with the debatable exception of Leonard
\nMaltin’s guide to movies on video?\n <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

I wish I could feel more hopeful about book culture,
\nbelieve more strongly that something might be done. But we’ve become a
\nshallow people, happy enough with the easy gratifications of mere
\nspectacle in all the aspects of life. Real books are simply too serious
\nfor us. Too slow. Too hard. Too long. Now and again, we may feel that
\njust maybe we’ve shortchanged our better selves, that we might have
\nlistened to great music, contemplated profoundly moving works of art,
\nread books that mattered, but instead we turned away from them because
\nit was time to tune into “Law and Order” reruns, or jack in to
\nWarhammer on our home computer, or get back to the latest clone of “The
\nDa Vinci Code.” Sooner or later, though, probably late at night or when
\nfaced with one of life’s crises, we will surprise in ourselves what
\npoet Philip Larkin called the hunger to be more serious.<\/p>\n

But come the dawn and our good intentions usually
\nevaporate. Why persist with Plutarch or George Eliot or Beckett or
\nWilliam Gaddis when you can drop into a chat room or gaze at digitized
\nlovelies or go to still another movie? Instead of reading Toqueville or
\nHenry Adams, we just check out the latest blogs. In short, we turn
\ntoward the bright and shiny, the meretricious tinsel, the strings of
\neye-catching beads for which we exchange our intellectual birthright as
\nfor a mess of pottage. For modern Americans, only the unexamined life
\nis worth living.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When our non-grad student friends come over, they always express some
\nsort of awe at the number of books we have.  There’s 10 almost
\nentirely full bookshelves in the house, and we’ve probably got nearly
\n2000 books on the premises.<\/p>\n

And yet, I kick myself at night that I haven’t read more during the day
\nand in the evening, distracted as I have been by the Internet and CSI <\/span>or the Simpsons<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Dirda, of the Washington Post, has a fabulous screed about the recent NEA report on the state of reading in America.  It’s a bit over the top, but still quite apropos. [Study author and poet Dana] Gioia thinks it unlikely that any “careful observer of contemporary American society will be greatly surprised” at this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-oo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}