“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” – Henry David Thoreau’s wisdom as quoted in Book Digest–itself now in suspension.
Funny. So many publishers and writers love the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which stretched out copyrights by 20 years past previous terms. But what if the main threat weren’t piracy on the Net but people not caring about reading and literature in the first place? This morning’s New York Times carries an item headlined Fewer Noses Stuck in Books in America, Survey Finds. Better schools would be the main way to help; but so would the repeal or mitigation of Bono, as well as the creation of a TeleRead-style national digital library system. Bono in time will cost the public billions and discourage the reading of good, free literature, especially on the Net. Without price tags, potential readers can be so much more adventurous. Doesn’t anyone in Washington care? In case the copyright zealots doubt the existence of a problem, here is an excerpt from the Times:
The survey, called “Reading at Risk,” is based on data from “The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts,” conducted by the Census Bureau in 2002. Among its findings are that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry; that the consumer pool for books of all kinds has diminished; and that the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is quickening. In addition it finds that the downward trend holds in virtually all demographic areas.
“What this study does is give us accurate numbers that support our worst fears about American reading,” said Dana Gioia, the chairman of the endowment, who will preside over a discussion of the survey results at the New York Public Library this morning. “It quantifies what people have been observing anecdotally, but the news is that it has been happening more rapidly and more pervasively than anyone thought possible. Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group,” he said, calling the survey results “deeply alarming.”
The study, with its stark depiction of how Americans now entertain, inform and educate themselves, does seem likely to fuel debate over issues like the teaching and encouragement of reading in schools, the financing of literacy programs and the prevalence in American life of television and the other electronic media that have been increasingly stealing time from readers for a couple of generations at least. It also raises questions about the role of literature in the contemporary world.
The survey also makes a striking correlation between readers of literature and those who are socially engaged, noting that readers are far more likely than nonreaders to do volunteer and charity work and go to art museums, performing arts events and ballgames. “Whatever good things the new electronic media bring, they also seem to be creating a decline in cultural and civic participation,” Mr. Gioia said. “Of literary readers, 43 percent perform charity work; only 17 percent of nonreaders do. That’s not a subtle difference.”
I’m not certain about that last point. Perhaps we’re not talking cause-effect here; maybe the same characteristics that make people care about books make them care about charity along the way. Still, the study appears to have made a powerful case on the whole.
Specifics:
The survey sample–17,135 people–makes it one of the largest studies ever conducted on the subject of arts participation, and the data were compared with similar studies from 1982 and 1992. In the literature segment respondents were asked whether they had, during the previous 12 months, without the impetus of a school or work assignment, read any novels, short stories, poems or plays in their leisure time.
Their answers show that just over half–56.6 percent–read a book of any kind in the previous year, down from 60.9 percent a decade earlier. Readers of literature fell even more precipitously, to 46.7 percent of the adult population, down from 54 percent in 1992 and 56.9 percent in 1982, which means that in the last decade the erosion accelerated significantly. The literary reading public lost 5 percent of its girth between 1982 and 1992; another 14 percent dropped away in the following decade. And though the number of readers of literature is about the same now as it was in 1982–about 96 million people–the American population as a whole has increased by almost 40 million.
The survey found that men (37.6 percent) were doing less literary reading than women (55.1 percent); that Hispanics (26.5 percent) were doing less than African-Americans (37.1 percent) and whites (51.4 percent); but that all categories were declining. The steepest declines of any demographic group are among the youngest adults. In 1982, 59.8 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds read literature; by 2002 that figure had dropped to 42.8 percent. In the 25-to-34 age group, the percentage of literary readers dropped to 47.7 from 62.1 over the same period.
Especially troubling, besides young people’s waning interest in books, are the statistics for Hispanics, the fastest-growing of the major ethnic groups.
Also bothersome is the Pollyannaish attitude of Kevin Star, California’s librarian emeritus. He said that if close to 50 percent of Americans are reading literature, “that’s not bad actually.” Huh? The Times quoted him as saying that “You can get through American life and be very successful without anybody ever asking you whether Shylock is an anti-Semitic character or whether `Death in Venice’ is better than `The Magic Mountain.” True. But what if millions of American children are growing up without even knowing who Charles Dickens was, or F. Scott Fitzgerald? Forget about Thomas Mann, and worry about the basics. Our national appreciation of literature is diminishing, and to the extent it does, our capacity for common dialogue, whether in politics, business or any other endeavor, is shrinking–especially as we become even more of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial nation. Furthermore, between Bono and the current copyright laws that end the need for registration of copyrighted works, it will be far more difficult to use the Net to popularize forgotten Hispanic and Afro-American writers and make them part of the mainstream.
The Kerry-Edwards team should keep the above in mind if it continues to stonewall people asking for its position on the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and other anti-child, anti-Net copyright legislation. What makes Sen. Edwards’ silence all the more outrageous is that his lawyer wife–an active participant in the campaign–studied literature at the University of North Carolina and at one point was planning to “teach people to love to read.” An MSNBC story reports:
What she says about her favorite writer, Henry James, probably explains the Edwardses’ consistently long-view attitude toward an awfully short campaign season: “You’ve got to have patience, but if you’re a reader and you love baseball, you love James; it’s a little play here and there, not constant scoring. The truth of most anything is not in some big statement but in small things, and that’s what James recognized. That and the fact that we’re constantly making moral choices.”
Notice the reference to Henry James? Thanks to Sonny Bono and the damage to free literature on the Net, fewer people will fully appreciate the reference to James-style public domain works in the future. Thank goodness James is free for now.Isn’t it time for Ms. Edwards and a librarian type named Laura Bush to get their husbands to respond in deed or at least word to the Bono mess? John Edwards needn’t wait until he possibly becomes vice president; he is already on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees copyright. Even if Edwards feels that he can’t or won’t work for outright repeal of Bono, he would do well to consider a compromise such as the proposed Public Domain Enhancement Act or another possibility, the Walt Disney Text Access Act. Beyond that, for works still under copyright, a well-stocked national digital library system would help, especially if well blended with local schools and libraries. TeleRead, anyone?
(Spotted via LISNews.)
Related: Literary Reading in Dramatic Decline, According to National Endowment for the Arts Survey. You can download a .pdf of the actual study on reading. Also of interest is Patrick Clinton’s Book Magazine series called Literacy in America: The crisis you don’t know about, and what we can do about it.
Coming over the weekend: The biggest myth about writers and the Sonny Bono Act.
