The Decline of Good Reading

A friend directs Viewpoint to a troubling report about the decline of reading in America. Here's an excerpt:

A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts supplies statistics that demonstrate that the number of readers in America is declining. The report is introduced in an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Literary Reading Is Declining Faster Than Before, Arts Endowment's New Report Says." As the article explains, the report portrays a steep decline in "literary reading" (described as the reading of any type of fiction, poetry, and plays) over the past two decades; it also describes some reactions to the report's findings.

"Reading at Risk: a Survey of Literary Reading in America" reports data gathered from 17,000 adults across major demographic groups categorized by age, gender, education, income, religion, race, and ethnicity. It addresses what and how much those sampled read, other civic activities in which they participate, factors and trends in literature participation, and includes a summary and conclusions. It comprises a preface and executive summary, five chapters, and appendices.

If this is true it has the potential to be a cultural catastrophe. Immersing oneself in literature is one of the most effective ways to be introduced to the big ideas of religion, politics, philosophy, and even science. It's a great way to learn history. A society which stops reading is much less likely to develop depth in any of these areas of their intellectual life. If we truly are no longer exposing ourselves to the literary heritage handed down to us by former generations we are impoverishing our minds by a kind of intellectual depression which does to a nation culturally what an economic depression does to it financially.

Perhaps the decline in good reading is partly responsible for the superficiality of so many young people who live like intellectual water-striders, gliding across the surface of life, never breaking through to experience the depths below.

Not a few young women, for example, seem interested in little more than shopping, their social life, the celebrities they read about in People magazine, and their romantic interests, not necessarily in that order. The preoccupations of many young men, on the other hand, go no deeper than sports, cars, beer, and sex.

Literature raises us above this brutishness. It sharpens our minds and attunes them to an awareness that there is more to life than merely gratifying impulses and appetites. It enriches us in ways that money and physical satisfactions never can. A man or woman may be economically poor but spiritually and intellectually rich. Such people's lives are noble despite their poverty.

And that is what we're losing, if indeed we are losing our appreciation for literature. We're losing our nobility.