Nobody reads anymore. We know this, right? The end of reading is here. We are post-literate. It may be true of many of us, but I know it’s untrue of Jared Henderson. He has read more—and read more critically—than most people analyzing this issue. And in all his sleuthing and analysis, he’s helped clarify the issue in ways much of the current coverage does not.
Henderson starts by throwing a flag (some “mustard on the lettuce,” as my local high-school football announcer would say) on widely cited but dubious statistics published by the National Literacy Institute. While, for instance, NLI says 79 percent of U.S. adults are literate, the organization also says “130 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children.”
While literacy may be an issue for the rest of us, NLI apparently struggles with math. Asks Henderson,
If the United States has a 79% adult literacy rate, then how is it possible that 130 million adults struggle to read a simple story to their children? There are roughly 267 million adults in the United States—so, 130 million is approximately half of US adults. Half of US adults cannot read a simple story to their children, we are told, but we have a 79% literacy rate—how can this be?
This is only the beginning of statistical shenanigans. NLI conducts no original research and provides sources for no one else’s data, so where do its worrisome numbers come from? Check your armpit.
So far, no one has nominated Henderson for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, bestowed upon civilians who make vital contributions to, among other things, American culture. He deserves at least two for wading through an alphabet soup of acronymic organizations—UNESCO, IALS, PIAAC, OECD, ACEI, NCES, etc.—tracing the sources of these and many other knobby stats and their accompanying analysis, such as the baffling claim that Iran surpasses the U.S. in literacy. (Hogwash.) As Henderson painstakingly shows, NLI and others so badly mishandle the relevant data and definitions, you can’t trust what pours out the cocktail shaker.
Does this mean we’re good, no problems? No. Henderson highlights three distinct reading crises: (1) overall literacy rates, which are lower than we should be comfortable with, (2) how we teach kids to read, and (3) the challenge of inculcating a culture of literacy. He also takes himself to task for how he’s covered the issue in the past—something most of us find harder than reading Dickens. Please jump over to Henderson’s excellent article to explore these points, along with his detailed dissection of NLI’s numbers.
No one reads literary fiction. This is also false, as Lincoln Michel points out, but there may be good reason folks find (some) literary fiction tedious. There are three faults worth mentioning: ideological, topical, and technical. And, please, for the love of God, don’t read this as universalizing.
Start with the first. While Tablet recently praised Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Life of M, Henry Oliver lets the air out of the balloon: “I was absorbed enough to want to finish this novel, even though I don’t find it impressive.” Though Oliver considers Cusk technically and stylistically adept, she seems intent on round-about preaching. “Life of M is so committed to its uncharacterful characters that everyone is simply an expression of a familiar perspective that belongs outside the novel,” says Oliver. “There is no narrative ambivalence: Cusk is dictating a worldview through a narrative. . . . The more philosophical the book sounds, the emptier the prose becomes.” Yawn—and back to Melville.
As for the second, Devon Halliday offers a close reading of the opening pages of two upcoming releases: Emma Cline’s Switzy and Hernan Diaz’s Ply. Halliday has worked in publishing as an editor and agent and scrutinizes these passages through that double lens. Halliday grants that Cline can spin a good sentence. Her beef? She employs that skill to overdescribe a game of smartphone solitaire—more yawning—instead of something that might actually draw a reader.
On to the third fault, exemplified by Diaz: For Halliday, the opening of Ply “verg[es] on unintelligible.” Among other faults, Diaz tangles his verb tenses, mixes his metaphors, and leaves the reader wondering if the narrator has his own story straight, all basic mistakes that muddle the work.
Sentence after sentence, these authors strain for a labored profundity that can’t hold up to a little poking. Maybe the rest of the novels earn their cumbersome openings, but Halliday isn’t investing the time to find out: “I read the first pages as closely as I could stand, and I didn’t see anything worth sticking around for.”
Her larger point is that this sort of thing isn’t limited to a couple of new releases this fall. “They exemplify a trend in literary fiction that I’ve come to hate,” she says: “Describing Unimportant Things in Unnecessary Detail In Order to Sound Smart.” In some ways, Oliver and Halliday share a similar complaint: These are stories in which the story, and all a good one entails, seems to be secondary.
Paying attention. Peter Levine drapes his definition of the humanities over three forms of attention:
“private attention to an artifact” (hey, this is a great book!)
“collective attention to an artifact” (hey, let’s read this great book together!)
“participation in a public sphere in which an artifact serves as a model for deliberating on what we should do” (hey, this book has implications for all of us!)
I may be daft and undereducated, but I’ve never heard it formulated that simply before. The problem is it’s hard to establish ROI for this sort of pursuit, worthy as it may be. What’s the justification for dedicating that kind of focus, especially when in a university setting there’s a price tag attached to learning how to deliberately attend?
We can look to outcomes, but Levine advises against it, suggesting that the emphasis should be on the intrinsic value of humane studies. I don’t think that argument solves the economic issue. But I do think it begins to address the threefold reading crisis Henderson describes.
Reading, whether at home or in school, has instrumental justifications, but they’re not very robust, and any number of other activities might substitute. No, the true value in reading lies in an extended immersion in the mind of another human being—something no other technology can quite duplicate. Once someone finally experiences that thrill, spending their scarce attention on books becomes one of the better investments they can make.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please hit the ❤️ below, 💬 discuss, and share it with your friends—or anyone you know concerned about the reading crisis.
Not a subscriber? Take a moment and sign up. Free subscribers get two-week access to all new posts. Paid subscribers get access to the full archive, going back to 2022.
Before you go, check this out👇
I always feel better after reading. I never feel good after being on my phone. The better choice is obvious, even if it is still a difficult decision to make.
The 13th Month by my friend the late Doug Colligan, which recounts in wry and often touching detail both his year in Vietnam in 1968 as a combat engineer and the trip he took back to Pleiku in 2000. Doug who had a career as a magazine editor writes with a beautiful simplicity about powerful memeories