Current Issue

"Same Song, Different Verse"

Since last we spoke, you and I, yet more surveys of teenagers, Eskimos who live in the South and own coyotes, white guys who weigh more than the doctors think is prudent (which should have included me and yet didn’t) as well as host of other groups have all come out and they all say the same thing. Reading is in decline and we are doomed.

To hear some tell it, the written word is fading away and we are all faced with more time in front of the television and game consoles as the publishing houses collapse, stores and libraries close and the end of the world can’t be far behind. Doom is upon us.

Which certainly won’t be good for BJ or myself. Better get out now while we can. Save yourselves!

Good grief. What utter nonsense. Is anything really happening?

Last time, I postulated that if the surveys were correct, what it could possibly mean for our country. I mean, if we accept the notion that reading is in decline, what logical consequences could there be? Not just in the realm of the big picture stuff like the war on terrorism and political positions, but in the lower level but still important stuff like the newspaper you read and staffing of the local book store down the street. There could be significant ramifications. That is if the survey numbers are correct.

Assuming they are it makes one wonder why Amazon came out with the Kindle? The latest proof according to some very strident people that publishing is enduring a cataclysmic shift, the way to read will never be the same, that e-books will take over the world, etc. Sill not buying that argument, because as the readers are currently constructed, I don’t see such change happening.

But, if reading truly is in an overall decline, one wonders why Amazon would do such a thing? Sort of like jumping on the BETA bandwagon which lost to what can be argued an inferior format in VHS. If reading is in decline why would they be developing another reading platform?

I don’t think Amazon is stupid enough to invest in a dying concept. And I don’t think reading in general is in a decline no matter what the surveys say.

So, if reading by and of itself is not in decline then what is going on with all these surveys? I don’t know. Beyond the last time such surveys were out with such negative numbers back when I was working my rear off in the local bookstores, I remember being in High School in the late 70’s when there were panic reports that teenagers weren’t reading anymore. That new game console known as Atari was the cause according to the pundits and psycho babbalists of the time. Not only was reading in decline, kids participating in sports were in decline and the very fate of the free world was at stake. No doubt why the Russians invaded Afghanistan.

(And in the interests of fair disclosure I should further acknowledge that I still have my old Atari 2600 and play games on it on a fairly regular basis. My sons’ peals of laughter at the quality of the games not withstanding.)

Back then I managed to read on average at least a couple of books a week. Something I still do today. Now days, most are done in the course of reviewing but reading is still a basic and significant part of my life. As it is with my boys, especially my youngest who has been known to devour five books, each over three hundred pages in length, in one week while playing nearly every game system known to mankind on a daily basis.

And when I substitute in the classrooms across the city, I always see several students in each class carrying novels. These are books they are reading for personal pleasure in addition to whatever is mandated by that teacher and/or course. Seems to be just about the same numbers as back when I was in school.

Then there are the waiting lists at my local library. For example, when the latest Patricia Cornwell book came out, they got thirty copies and had a waiting list that was in the several hundreds. It still is true today of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.

Now, of course, the sample group that I encounter in such ways is statistically small and yet, when one looks at the numbers, the survey groups are also small. They somehow extrapolate out such small samples to paint a picture of America as a whole. I can do that just as well and my picture is far different than the one they depict.

Who is right?

I don’t know. I do think they are surveying the wrong folks.

Every few years, just like promises of campaign reform, drought cycles, and coming plagues of locusts, media reports preach doom and gloom and say as a nation we aren’t reading anymore. As some have written on various lists, the surveys are flawed as to what is considered reading material and that in the posters’ opinion, folks are actually reading more. Their arguments make a lot of sense to me.

Someday, I expect archeologists will find somewhere on a cave wall or deep in some canyon wall a pictograph that will be deciphered to say that the folks then weren’t reading cave drawings like they used to.