| From
the September/November 2004 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Editorial
More Is More
 he
recent National Endowment for the Arts report on reading (available
online at www.nea.gov/pub/ReadingAtRisk.pdf)
provides a number of juicy debating points, although its central point
— Americans are reading fewer books than they used to —
is not in dispute. Provoking the noisiest argument is the report’s
peculiar definition of “literary reading,” limiting it
to the reading of books of fiction, plays, or poetry. How are essays,
history, biography, etc., not “literary”? Why does the
report assume that printed, bound books are necessarily more “literary”
than audio or digital books or magazines? Why does the report bury
in a short paragraph the not-exactly-irrelevant fact that almost half
of adult Americans are not literate enough to enjoy the “literary
reading” whose fate the report bemoans?
And why is so much of this “literary
reading” becoming a greater and greater percentage of the
books submitted for review to the Horn Book, with the books
themselves getting longer and longer? When I complained recently
about the overabundance of novels now published for children, and
the epic proportions so many of them reach, an editor friend told
me, “. . . and it’s just the beginning.
Big novels are It.”
If the book is in such a perilous state, then just
who is going to be reading these novels? The NEA report does not
address children’s reading, but it does note that younger
adults are less likely to read than older adults, and one supposes
the trend would hold true among the under-18s. Are the Big Books
a last gasp, flowers at their most voluptuous just before they die?
Naw. I’m guessing that the Big Books
are instead trying to tell us that books will survive by being as
book-like as possible. Of course people are reading fewer books:
more stories are coming at us in more forms than ever, and sometimes
the movie is the better choice. But the kind of extravagant storytelling
we’ve been seeing in current children’s fiction is the
kind best served by the printed word, if only so you can keep flipping
back to the map or cast of characters. Or linger when you want to,
put it down when you have to, and, if you can part with it, give
to a friend when you’re done. Books that compel these kinds
of responses are the ones that will stick around — and do
we really need any others?
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