WHEN BOOKWORMS BECOME CHICKEN LITTLES

It only takes one study to make book lovers turn apocalyptic. Last week, that study was Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, unveiled by the National Endowment for the Arts at the New York Public Library. "What this study does is give us accurate numbers that support our worst fears about American reading," said NEA chairman Dana Gioia. "Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group." The New York Timessummed up: "Fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry; the consumer pool for books of all kinds has diminished; and the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is quickening." Those who said they had read a book at all in the past year declined from 61 percent in 1992 to 56 percent in 2002. The number of readers who reported reading literature is at its 1982 level of about 96 million people—but there are 40 million more Americans than there were then. Gioia said the data is "deeply alarming."

But both the Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education (here) were far too hasty to proclaim that the literary sky is falling. For one thing, the first comparable study was done in 1982, so it's quite an extrapolation to place these results on a grand downward curve that stretches back to a golden age of reading (wouldn't a study of the decline of network television viewing since that year seem perilous for that medium?). I'd like to see a study on how many more readers there are now compared with 100 years ago, when literacy was rarer, and when average Americans were not surrounded by ubiquitous bookstores selling affordable copies of the classics, as they are now.

This is not to deny that reading is fighting an uphill battle (nor that booksellers today largely subsist on the empty calories of Dr. Phil and other faddish inanities). But the severity of the challenge of visual media may only make the NEA's report more encouraging. Personally, I'm amazed that the practice of reading books (and business of selling them) has hung on as well as it did through the radio revolution, and then the television revolution, and then the Internet revolution. The Times wasn't blind to this big picture. It quoted former California state librarian Kevin Starr as saying the study's findings were "not bad, actually. … In an age where there's no canon, where there are so many other forms of information, and where we're returning to medieval-like oral culture based on television," he said, "I think that's pretty impressive." (For a tribute to the late Walter Ong, Jesuit scholar of orality, media, and culture, see the current issue of B&C). As a member of the 18-24 demographic the NEA is especially worried about, let me predict that the pleasure of reading a good book—and the ineffable silent communion with the voice from the page—will never go out of style.

Related:
Lack of reading dooms us all, says author Andrew Solomon in a Times op-ed
Earlier:
Books, books everywhere, and but a drop to read, by John Wilson in B&C
The surprisingly robust state of reading, last year in this weblog   
The literary tastes of middlebrow America, last week in this weblog

PLACES & CULTURE

From the New York Times :

• LUANG PRABANG, Laos - This former royal capital perches on the banks of the Mekong River, a gorgeous medley of gilded temples and pagodas, creaking wooden homes and some spruced-up vestiges of the French colonial era.  … Now the foreigners are back. … Specifically, Unesco, the United Nations agency that fosters the preservation of important historic sites. … The town was named a world heritage site by Unesco in 1995, a designation that makes it eligible for United Nations preservation funds. Among other things, the residents are being offered traditional-style plaster instead of the big no-no—concrete—for refurbishment. But the requests are being met with … resistance. "When we explain that timber is part of the tradition, they don't understand, because to people here timber is the material of the poor," said Emmanuel Pouille, a French architect and historian, who is the chief technical adviser to the Unesco project. "Here, concrete is a symbol of being rich. They say, 'Why can't we live like the people in the suburbs of Bangkok?' ''

• Some of the most talented writers in America have made their way to Iowa City, drawn by the University of Iowa's renowned Iowa Writers' Workshop. John Cheever, Philip Roth and Robert Lowell dropped by to teach; John Irving, Bharati Mukherjee and Margaret Walker first came to learn. Many come away professing lasting affection for this city of bursting bookstores, leafy old neighborhoods and friendly shopkeepers, set amid rolling Iowa farmland and where nearly half the 63,000 residents are students. Not all the cafe conversation is literary—U.I. turns out the usual mix of professionals from engineers to dentists. And when writer's block strikes, you can usually find somebody at the next table to talk Big Ten football.

WEEKLY DIGEST

• Did you know that Microsoft has patented the use of the human body as a computer? It's not a science fiction nightmare—it's U.S. Patent 6,754,472, and it was issued on June 22, says the Economist. The patent is for a "method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body," the Economist reports. "What Microsoft is proposing is to use the skin's own conductive properties to transmit the data needed to create" what is called a "personal area network," or PAN. With this kind of arrangement, "it would be possible to have, say, just one keypad for a mobile phone, an MP3 music player and a PDA. The keypad might even be a person's forearm," the Economist says. Like most of Microsoft's big ideas, PAN started elsewhere—MIT and IBM presented the idea at the Comdex trade show in 1996, suggesting that "two people could transmit business-card details to each other electronically, via a handshake." Article
• In 2001, a flash flood in southeastern Iran uncovered a series of ancient graves marked with stones featuring elaborate carved pictures. Archaeologist Yousef Madjidzadeh took an interest in the treasures of the desolate valley and concluded that they were made by "the earliest Oriental civilization"—even earlier than Mesopotamia, one thousand miles to the west in what is now Iraq. If he's right, says Smithsonian magazine, it "would overturn our understanding of the critical period when humans first began to live a literate urban life. It would also give sudden prominence to this forgotten corner of Iran." Skeptics are waiting for radio-carbon tests to confirm Madjidzadeh's claims, but they're still interested in his discoveries. His American colleague, Holly Pittman, says that no matter how the Iran region measures up to Mesopotamia, "the fact that this was a third millennium civilization adds tremendously to our knowledge of the time." Summary and PDF of article
• "We're here to preserve democracy, not practice it," says Gene Hackman's character to Denzel Washington's on the nuclear submarine in Crimson Tide. The same holds America as a whole: the land of equality is also the land of bullies, says Robert W. Fuller, author of Somebodies and Nobodies. Fuller has coined a word for the way power is wielded by "mean bosses, disdainful doctors, power-hungry politicians, belittling soccer coaches and arrogant professors," and that word is rankism, says the New York Times . Although the Times doesn't make it clear how rankism is much different from populism, it says Fuller hasn't decided what will come of the anti-bullying crowd he's rousing. "I don't see the form the movement will take," he told the Times. "But I don't feel too bad about it because Betty Friedan told me she didn't have any idea there would be a women's movement when she wrote The Feminine Mystique." Article
• During a 20-day period last fall, over a dozen storms raged on the sun, including some of the most powerful eruptions ever seen. Because of the gear we now have floating throughout the solar system, earthlings can now follow the waves of these blasts, says the Times. The wave from one of last fall's solar storms recently passed Saturn, where it was picked up by the Cassini craft, and will reach the Voyager 1 craft, nine billion miles from the sun, later this month. The wave's destination: the end of the solar system at the end of this year or early next. Article Meanwhile, the BBC says the sun has never been as active in the last millennium as it is now. ArticleElsewhere:Planet found in the constellation Orion, from the AP
• Miscellaneous:Crime surges in small towns, from the Christian Science Monitor (also see second item here) - An analysis of Peruvian bribes, from the Washington Post - The New York Times Magazine cover story on the future of China, and the global power shift from the West to India and Asia, from Foreign Affairs - Video messages to adorn gravestones? from the BBC, and green burials from the London Guardian - Dinosaurs' families and fleas from Discover magazine
• Previous/Archive/About/Feedback/Links/CT blog

Nathan Bierma is editorial assistant atBooks & Culture. He writes the weekly "On Language" column for the Chicago Tribune.