Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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I have just finished reading a revealing report by the US National Endowment for the Arts. "Reading at Risk" emerged from a massive survey of 17,000 adults who were asked about their reading habits. The survey was conducted by the US Census Bureau, which is in itself interesting. That the government department responsible for counting the number of Americans supervised the survey lends the report rather more credibility than would have accrued had it been conducted by one of the many private gaugers of public opinion.

Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, describes the report, in the preface, as "a detailed but bleak assessment of the decline of reading's role in the nation's culture". He deplores the fact that less than half of the adult population now reads fiction. This fact, the preface rightly insists, must be of concern to "anyone who loves literature or values the cultural, intellectual and political importance of active and engaged literacy in American society".

The preface then goes on to describe the huge shift that has occurred as the public turned increasingly towards electronic media for both entertainment and information.

Like the author of the preface I too believe that reading a book is a real pleasure which, at the same time, needs a degree of active attention and engagement. Reading itself, writes Gioia, is "a progressive skill that depends on years of education and practice".

In contrast, the electronic media makes fewer demands on the audience. Tellingly, in communication theory, TV audiences tend to be referred to as "passive participants". This kind of media is, in my opinion, colourless and lacks the intimacy that exists between a book and its reader.

But, of course, one cannot deny the value of this "oral culture", nor is it possible just to dismiss it, to sweep it beneath a metaphorical carpet. Electronic media offer the considerable advantage of diversity and access as well as immediacy. Print culture, by contrast, affords irreplaceable forms of focussed attention and contemplation that make complex communications and insights possible.

An important fact emerges from this report. People who read play a more active role in their communities. They are the ones who frequent theatrical and musical performances, who visit museums and art galleries, who listen to poetry readings and who try to develop their literary or other hidden abilities.

The report goes further showing, by a careful use of statistical data, that readers play a more active role than non-readers across a whole range of social activities. They do more voluntary and philanthropic work, and they are more politically engaged. The preface concludes that reading is not "a timeless, universal capability: it is a specific intellectual skill and social habit that depends on a great many educational, cultural and economic factors".

As Americans -- or any other people, for that matter -- begin to loose this capability the nation becomes "less informed, active and independent-minded". These are not, the survey points out, "qualities that a free, innovative or productive society can afford to lose".

While the report is worried about the rapid decline in reading, I could not help but feel that at times the warning bells it sounds may be being rung a little prematurely. Over 50 per cent of Americans read regularly, with 46.7 per cent choosing literature. There are, then, 96 million American readers of fiction -- ie novels and short stories. The report contained a number of other facts that also impressed themselves upon me, not least that in the year 2000, the year in which the survey was prepared, the publishing industry produced 122,000 new titles and a total of 2.5 billion books were sold.

Going through these statistics, I cannot help wondering what it is that the National Endowment for the Arts is so worried about.