Michael Dirda of the Washington Post recently produced As I Live And Read, a wisftul commentary on the NEA's much-discussed "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America".

He opens with the following suspicious statement:

No doubt I could have looked online for the report, but I prefer to regard the Web as largely an invention of the Devil. I use the thing for e-mail, but that's just about it. I have seen the best minds of the next generation, and a few from my own, destroyed by its insidious ensorcelments.

Ah. Well, in that case, I think we can quite sensibly not expect a balanced view of Internet culture, and its relationship to reading, in this essay. According to Dirda:

By "literary" reading, the NEA report means "novels, short stories, plays, or poetry." But novels is a category that embraces mysteries, chick lit, adventure novels, Westerns, fantasy and science fiction, spy thrillers, possibly even children's picture books (this isn't clear).

Although he is careful to point out that I enjoy work in nearly all of fiction's genres -- occasionally even Harlequin romances, whose fans probably account for most of the people who get through a dozen or more titles a year, he naturally cannot elevate these works to the level of serious reading, as Literary Reading. He insists, Any genre is capable of producing work of high artistic merit. He means, some of my favorite books are genre fiction, but I wouldn't want to be wedded to any of them.

There's a lot of nostalgic tragedy in this essay, about how we've become a shallow people, happy enough with the easy gratifications of mere spectacle in all the aspects of life and how we no longer have the intellectual fascination to read Richardson's Clarissa or Freud. Freud.

Look, bub, I read Freud. And I read Chaucer. And Shakespeare. (too many to link a particular one). I even enjoyed most of the "serious reading" of my college years. I still read Dickens for pleasure on occasion, or his modern admirers. But I read mostly for pleasure now, and that means, for me, lots of genre fiction, magazines, and the web. I see plenty of theater, too, even if I don't read plays. Actually, I think reading plays isn't nearly as worthwhile as seeing them staged, but that's a different argument.

To me, there are two problems with Dirda's thesis. Modern life does, as he points out, include many tempting alternatives to reading. So what? So I watch more movies than I read books. Does that mean I'm intellectually impoverished? If I get my news from NPR instead of from the Chicago Tribune, or even if I get my news [gasp!] online, does that mean I'm no longer an engaged member of the reading public? Of course not. If Dickens's contemporaries had only theater and books to entertain them, and they read more books than I do--and had more leisure time, and read because the discussion of the most recent fiction was a vital piece of their social interaction--who cares? That simply means I now have more options. And I've been just as stimulated by an in-depth discussion of the meaning behind Pulp Fiction as I was by my last discussion of a great book. Real books are simply too serious for us. Too slow. Too hard. Too long. No. But we differ on what exactly a "real book" is, and on whether the only source of thought, wit, and learning is "literature."

My other issue is with Dirda's assumption that the greatest books are found in our past. He snears at those who read Oprah's Book Club selections, and The Da Vinci Code, and mourns how we have turned our backs on Thoreau. My father often laments that there are old (and doubtless great) movies I have not seen. He is frequently disappointed by newer films (as am I, to be quite fair), and by remakes (usually dreadful). But the body of quality film available now, in 2004, is so huge that I will never catch up, just like the body of great literature. And, in fact, there are many great modern films I may never see, too. Wonderful movies that will stand the test of time are still being produced. Fantastic novels and plays, which will be read by the grandchilden of my generation, are still being published. Simply being old does not make something great. And being new doesn't make it worthless. That's the most offensive sort of nostalgia.

And by the way, Michael Dirda, dismissing The Da Vinci Code and Oprah's picks as crap, even if they are, is pointless and detrimental to your purpose. You want people to read more? Stop judging their choices. If people read chick lit, and it's an easy read, and they get something out of it, who are you to judge their taste? Proper young ladies were once discouraged from reading many of the novels you probably consider great literature. This is the worst sort of intellectual snobbery. Even if I did loathe The Da Vinci Code and couldn't finish it. Even if I do know that many writers, from Diana Wynne Jones to C.S. Lewis wrote better fantasy than J.K. Rowling. I'm still waiting for the next Harry Potter novel with anxious pleasure. You want to make something of it?

[via LISNews]

Posted by Hilary at September 16, 2004 10:56 AM