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9
July 2004 The
Decline of Civilization? The New York Times
reported
this week that according to a 2002 Census Bureau survey, fewer than half of
American adults read literature (novels, short stories, plays or poetry), and
that only 56.6% of the people surveyed read a book of any kind in the
previous year. The survey
focused on public participation in the arts, and links such participation to
reading habits: “Of literary readers, 43 percent perform charity work; only
17 percent of nonreaders do.”
“Participating in the arts” includes going to art museums, performing
arts events, and ball games. It seems to me if the
goal is to get people to go to arts events and perform charity work, then
pushing them to get more reading done as well isn’t going to get very
far. One could look at the
statistics and imagine a third factor that prompts that 43 percent to both do
charity work and tackle literary novels: ‘ample leisure time’ comes to
mind. Just think how much
charity work would get done if they got their noses out of those books! Nor am I convinced of the correlation
between literature consumption and ball game attendance; I don’t get the
feeling that the crowd waddling to the stadium with foam Philly Cheese Steaks
on their heads is coming from a book club discussion of Death in Venice. An informed and educated
populace is crucial to a thriving democracy, but being a reader of literature
isn’t a necessary or sufficient component of being a good citizen. The guy who reads the New York Times,
or even the New York Post, cover to cover every day may not have read
a book in the past year, but he’s at least as equipped to participate in
public life as someone who shuns television in favor of working her way
through Jane Austen’s oeuvre.
And we all know people who get along well with books but don’t get
along so well with other people. Those who have the noblest ideas about the virtues of reading are those who don’t actually do it; for those of us who love to read, it’s another guilty pleasure. |
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