Thanks for writing this, Joel. As a bookseller, I often want to invite the panicking naysayers to come into the shop on a Saturday and see all the children reading in the various spots around the store, the browsers making their way through our shelves, and listen in on the opinionated and interesting conversations taking place around contemporary books. Of course our attention spans are changing! And of course our shop is but a small sample size. But if our little bookshop can thrive in this small city, there remains more than a spark of literary interest in the world.
I actually have read Harold Bell Wright. Can't say I recommend him - over-the-top romanticism with more than a whiff of white supremacy and eugenics about it. I have a very good idea of what previous generations were reading, since my family was often given the contents of elderly people's bookshelves, and I read everything I could get my hands on while my parents had no time to read. A lot of Lloyd C. Douglas in them: The Robe, Magnificent Obsession, etc. - basically, 1950s technicolor blockbusters with light religious content and larger than life actors but in word format. There were a lot of historical and biblical novels with the salacious material dialed up to eleven - biblical novels are a genre that needs to go away, as no one needs King David's life written as if it were an installment in Game of Thrones. A copy of Peyton Place may have snuck in - I can't recall the title, but there was one book with a scene that sickened me so much I took it straight to my mother and asked her to get rid of it.
Each generation has their version of pulp. It’s not the fiction I worry about. Non-fiction especially the heavily researched kind is losing more and more readers. People say this is because most men don’t read and women read fiction which I dislike as an answer.
Great article! I wonder how many people who read Doctor Zhivago also read Peyton Place. I think there are various types of readers- some are carnivores, others are vegetarians, and then there are the omnivores. I am an omnivore and read a weird variety of books. Two of my all time favorite books are The Count of Monte Cristo and The Brothers Karamazov but I also read graphic novels and manga as well as romantasy, science fiction, horror, science writing, and nonfiction. When I was working 18 hour days seeing lots of hard things I just wanted an escape and a good story. A good story based on a good idea (like the Hunger Games) does not have to be wrapped up in layers of obfuscation and difficult prose to make it worthwhile or have meaning in someone's life. Reading should be fun when that is what the reader needs- otherwise reading numbers would be even lower. I think articles like the one in The Atlantic (which I have not read) create a sense of elitism around reading which is disappointing. Your article does a great job showing that going back to 1958 people were a very diverse group of readers and reading was not an elite sport reserved for the intellectuals. Enjoyable and "unserious literature" can often be the gateway drug to other writers and their works which have been kept alive in such lists as the 100 greatest works of fiction.
Really great intel on how the Pasternak got the knack. I should have doubted that bit a bit more. I've looked through so many used book store stacks of old pulp and mass market paperbacks looking for cool covers or misplaced Chandler. Like you say, they had about as good of taste as we ever did. I do think though that in the Post WWII era there were blips that we would not see today. Film, music, art, all of it was on a roll in that time period so greatness was available. I think William Faulkner's brother wrote as well and out sold his brother for a time. His works were much more straight over the plate.
Thanks so much for this, what a great article. Thanks for the perspective! I'm in the middle of two excellent free online courses and so enjoying some bookish podcast series, and kind of amazed at the background and contextual info AI can provide, and grateful for all of it. And I have my bookshelf of mysteries, fantasy and maybe a YA novel or two, for when I'm just a bit too tired for Dr. Zhivago.
You write with wisdom. I will now take a look at some old pulps. And ESG seems like a good place to start. It’s a shame I hadn’t kept more of my father’s books!
I still read Mickey Spillane, and Stanley Erle Gardner (including his books as A.A.Fair). Lots of people do to this day. There is more worth reading than it is possible to read and there is no need to throw shade on the popular. That was the article’s real crime. It criticized what people read and implied that meant they didn’t read at all.
Of all your examples Peyton Place, which inspired so many Soap Operas, is probably the best. The reason it has faded though is that Dirty Dancing told a similar story better and its shock value regarding abortion is staid by modern standards. The shocking became the mundane.
My grown kids and their spouses, who range from ages 27 to 33, all love to read. Actual books, too. Some classics, some current. We exchange books (like, say, hmm, *The Idea Machine*) at Christmas and on birthdays. A few of their friends we know do as well. Maybe they're an anomaly, but I'm always encouraged when I see them cracking one open on the back porch or in the living room after a holiday meal.
There were actually less people reading then than now, and further back, because literacy instruction was not universal, and the cost of books and subscribing to lending libraries was more than the poor could often manage. Today, there are few of us who are unable to read and write in our native tongue, since education has been standardized and made mandatory.
But the gap that once existed between rich and poor in terms of preferred reading material continues to exist, and it results in the trite, biased and inaccurate preaching-to-the-choir likes of Horowitz, who are outraged that is not "our" type of literature that is selling and being read more often. Victorian England and America were rife with obsequious busy-body types among the rich who were intent on "uplifting" the "immoral" poor, so they spoke highly of the literature that raised them and belittled the things the poor actually liked to read by forcing them to read the former instead.
From this, we have the current "best-seller" literary culture which sells only the material in line with its' audience's preferred desires and beliefs at one end, and the often discredited but much more accessible worlds of genre-based fiction and graphic novels. The latter projects have survived nearly a century of almost but not quite being driven out of business by moralists "protecting" "our" culture, whereas the former's vapidity becomes more acute the more it circles its wagons around gender and racial biases and adopts ever more exclusionary publishing policies.
So the question has never been why are people not reading- it has always been why are they not reading what we want them to read...
Thanks for writing this, Joel. As a bookseller, I often want to invite the panicking naysayers to come into the shop on a Saturday and see all the children reading in the various spots around the store, the browsers making their way through our shelves, and listen in on the opinionated and interesting conversations taking place around contemporary books. Of course our attention spans are changing! And of course our shop is but a small sample size. But if our little bookshop can thrive in this small city, there remains more than a spark of literary interest in the world.
Excellent points! I also have to wonder how many people who bought Dr Zhivago actually read it (as with The Satanic Verses 25 years later!)
Also, I think the Hunger Games books are actually quite good (though obviously not in classics territory).
I actually have read Harold Bell Wright. Can't say I recommend him - over-the-top romanticism with more than a whiff of white supremacy and eugenics about it. I have a very good idea of what previous generations were reading, since my family was often given the contents of elderly people's bookshelves, and I read everything I could get my hands on while my parents had no time to read. A lot of Lloyd C. Douglas in them: The Robe, Magnificent Obsession, etc. - basically, 1950s technicolor blockbusters with light religious content and larger than life actors but in word format. There were a lot of historical and biblical novels with the salacious material dialed up to eleven - biblical novels are a genre that needs to go away, as no one needs King David's life written as if it were an installment in Game of Thrones. A copy of Peyton Place may have snuck in - I can't recall the title, but there was one book with a scene that sickened me so much I took it straight to my mother and asked her to get rid of it.
Each generation has their version of pulp. It’s not the fiction I worry about. Non-fiction especially the heavily researched kind is losing more and more readers. People say this is because most men don’t read and women read fiction which I dislike as an answer.
Great article! I wonder how many people who read Doctor Zhivago also read Peyton Place. I think there are various types of readers- some are carnivores, others are vegetarians, and then there are the omnivores. I am an omnivore and read a weird variety of books. Two of my all time favorite books are The Count of Monte Cristo and The Brothers Karamazov but I also read graphic novels and manga as well as romantasy, science fiction, horror, science writing, and nonfiction. When I was working 18 hour days seeing lots of hard things I just wanted an escape and a good story. A good story based on a good idea (like the Hunger Games) does not have to be wrapped up in layers of obfuscation and difficult prose to make it worthwhile or have meaning in someone's life. Reading should be fun when that is what the reader needs- otherwise reading numbers would be even lower. I think articles like the one in The Atlantic (which I have not read) create a sense of elitism around reading which is disappointing. Your article does a great job showing that going back to 1958 people were a very diverse group of readers and reading was not an elite sport reserved for the intellectuals. Enjoyable and "unserious literature" can often be the gateway drug to other writers and their works which have been kept alive in such lists as the 100 greatest works of fiction.
Excellent piece.
Your mention of Zane Grey reminded me that my initial knowledge of him came from Colonel Potter in M*A*S*H .
I wonder too as the idea of YA has aged up in the last 20-40 years--that the themes of a YA novel in 2026 might be in line with a pop novel of 1956.
Really great intel on how the Pasternak got the knack. I should have doubted that bit a bit more. I've looked through so many used book store stacks of old pulp and mass market paperbacks looking for cool covers or misplaced Chandler. Like you say, they had about as good of taste as we ever did. I do think though that in the Post WWII era there were blips that we would not see today. Film, music, art, all of it was on a roll in that time period so greatness was available. I think William Faulkner's brother wrote as well and out sold his brother for a time. His works were much more straight over the plate.
Thanks so much for this, what a great article. Thanks for the perspective! I'm in the middle of two excellent free online courses and so enjoying some bookish podcast series, and kind of amazed at the background and contextual info AI can provide, and grateful for all of it. And I have my bookshelf of mysteries, fantasy and maybe a YA novel or two, for when I'm just a bit too tired for Dr. Zhivago.
You write with wisdom. I will now take a look at some old pulps. And ESG seems like a good place to start. It’s a shame I hadn’t kept more of my father’s books!
I still read Mickey Spillane, and Stanley Erle Gardner (including his books as A.A.Fair). Lots of people do to this day. There is more worth reading than it is possible to read and there is no need to throw shade on the popular. That was the article’s real crime. It criticized what people read and implied that meant they didn’t read at all.
Of all your examples Peyton Place, which inspired so many Soap Operas, is probably the best. The reason it has faded though is that Dirty Dancing told a similar story better and its shock value regarding abortion is staid by modern standards. The shocking became the mundane.
My grown kids and their spouses, who range from ages 27 to 33, all love to read. Actual books, too. Some classics, some current. We exchange books (like, say, hmm, *The Idea Machine*) at Christmas and on birthdays. A few of their friends we know do as well. Maybe they're an anomaly, but I'm always encouraged when I see them cracking one open on the back porch or in the living room after a holiday meal.
All very true--but let's not pooh-pooh Erle Stanley Gardner!
There were actually less people reading then than now, and further back, because literacy instruction was not universal, and the cost of books and subscribing to lending libraries was more than the poor could often manage. Today, there are few of us who are unable to read and write in our native tongue, since education has been standardized and made mandatory.
But the gap that once existed between rich and poor in terms of preferred reading material continues to exist, and it results in the trite, biased and inaccurate preaching-to-the-choir likes of Horowitz, who are outraged that is not "our" type of literature that is selling and being read more often. Victorian England and America were rife with obsequious busy-body types among the rich who were intent on "uplifting" the "immoral" poor, so they spoke highly of the literature that raised them and belittled the things the poor actually liked to read by forcing them to read the former instead.
From this, we have the current "best-seller" literary culture which sells only the material in line with its' audience's preferred desires and beliefs at one end, and the often discredited but much more accessible worlds of genre-based fiction and graphic novels. The latter projects have survived nearly a century of almost but not quite being driven out of business by moralists "protecting" "our" culture, whereas the former's vapidity becomes more acute the more it circles its wagons around gender and racial biases and adopts ever more exclusionary publishing policies.
So the question has never been why are people not reading- it has always been why are they not reading what we want them to read...