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December 21, 2005

reading crisis

Reading010501b

The reading crisis, like the social security crisis, has become a con-game based on facts. The NEA announces there are fewer literary readers than two decades ago. Books continue to have more competition from non-book technologies. Will people still read in 2060? As with Social Security, there are variables one just doesn’t know how to project forward: fewer people read books but more want to write them, and more and more books are published.

A real debate could be had about all these things. Instead we get the “reading crisis.” Under conditions of the reading crisis, everything a writer does, no matter how self-serving and reprehensible, becomes a blow in the service of literature. An arbiter of a “revolution” in reading features games, accordionists, and contests at his public events. A best-selling author sends out emails asking acquaintances to buy his new book before it slips off the Times top-seller list—because without these sales-markers, classic works can disappear. A blogger-author roams bookstores putting advertisements in books reminiscent of her own: “If you liked this, you’ll love The Tattle-Tale.” And these figures are held up as models of the hopeful signs for a renaissance in reading.

more from n+1 here.

Posted by Morgan Meis at 09:59 AM | Permalink

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"Rumour, Fear, and the Madness of Crowds" by James Patrick Chaplin, and "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles Mackay seem to have fallen from required reading lists. This is most unfortunate.

Posted by: m | Dec 21, 2005 1:15:43 PM

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