I wrote this post back in 2013, one of the first posts I wrote for the Mad Genius Club, and in light of the recent brouhaha in the lit world playing out on X (when is there not one?) it seemed apropos to repost this about the death of literature. Which has, you’ll note, been fading into inconsequence for at least 12 years but likely longer. Radio, movies, TV, and now video games, are all far more appealing routes to entertainment than reading: they are easy.
If you were to sign up for a literature class in college, what would you expect? Other than the obvious political/social slant, that is. Wouldn’t you expect to be studying, well, words on a page? I’m here to tell you that is changing.
I don’t know how long ago this came into being, I am taking two literature classes this semester (full time student, here, will be graduating in 2 1/2 years with either a Nursing or Microbiology degree) and was rather surprised as I read the syllabi for those classes. According to one, we would be studying “texts” defined: “‘texts’ broadly defined as including literary, disciplinary, public, and popular texts; print and digital texts; and visual and aural texts as well as verbal print text.”
I had expected poetry, short stories, and a dollop of the professor’s self-interests, and that I have gotten. We have not so much as discussed any novels, nor do I anticipate that we will, being half-way through the semester. In the other class, although it is not defined in the syllabus like that, we have watched and discussed films along with articles, stories, and poems. I know from talking to my classmates that those who will admit to reading outside class assignments (and those, only when they cannot avoid them) that books like the Rick Riordan series, and Beautiful Creatures (a book about a family of witches, and one that my then 13-yo daughter enjoyed over a year ago) are popular reads.
Which all makes me wonder about the future of Literature. We all know, anecdotally, that “literary” works may get push, but few actually enjoy reading them. Goodreads has a fascinating summary of the five most abandoned books, both popular and classics, with reasons why. The author of the article asks, “What’s your stance on abandonment? Are you an always-finish-no-matter-what kind of person? Have you ever hated the main character of a book? Do you hide your book covers in the airport because your reading selection embarrasses you? And most importantly, has anyone (other than my sister whom I envy for her reading abilities) read Catch 22 cover to cover?”
But does this mean, between what is taught in schools and what isn’t taught, that reading will go away in a generation or two? I have been reading H. Beam Piper, and re-read Null-ABC, which in light of my thoughts on the subject recently, seem terrifyingly plausible. By the way, that’s free on Amazon, follow the link, it’s worth your time! His fears then were more based on television and telephone, but now it is the internet, and videos, and very short texts that cater to a reading level that sometimes makes me muse on the demise of the polysyllabic vocabulary.
You see, I am well aware that I am not normal. I knew this even before starting college again, in my fourth decade of being-a-reader, and the somewhat awed discovery of my fellow (and much younger) classmates that I not only have a photographic (but not eidetic, more’s the pity, and then I have to explain what that means) memory, but can and will read an entire weeks assignment of short stories and poetry before the end of class, while actively participating in class discussions. But while my abnormality seems peculiar to them, I am more aware of their deficiencies, a matter of aroused pity for humans crippled by their inability to read at length. I don’t believe this is entirely their fault, they have been forced to read indigestible tomes full of despair and turgid prose on summer vacations, and in classes, short works more about messages and social relevance than anything which might have stirred their imagination and brought to life a love, or even mild affection for reading.
Can this be rectified? I’m not sure. We don’t — that is, we-the-reading-lovers, we the authors of what-is-good-to-read — have any weight in the classrooms of the masses. I can subversively slip a book suggestion, or a link to an e-tome, or perhaps even a physical book, to a young person, and I can raise my kids to read prolifically by encouraging them to do so at every turn. It feels like so little, but it is all I can do. Can I ask you all to join me in the reclamation of a “text” from anything but words (on paper, e-ink, or screen) and to join the resistance by recruiting a reader to the cause? Brother, Sister, can you spare a page?
Mad Genius Club 
14 responses to “The Future Of Literature”
a lot longer, pretty much since the invention of the printing press the elites have been decrying the ‘new books’ that only exist because people want to read them for fun.
In the US during the migration west, space and weight was precious so only the best books were taken. Once the Railroad was available and transportation costs dropped, you have the ‘penny dreadfuls’
in London, Dickens books were initially considered junk
those are pretty recent items that I can think of off the top of my head.
When C.S. Lewis wrote of the survival of popular works, he cited P.G. Wodehouse as a popular author who might survive.
And let us be just. New books tend to be bad because there is no filtering over time in place yet. The works that George Eliot pokes fun at in Silly Novels By Lady Novelists — well, there’s a reason why that essay tends to be talked about in context of fan fiction.
Since this is a blast from the past the link to the five most abandoned books got broken. Does anyone remember them? Besides Moby Dick. I’m assuming Moby Dick.
https://web.archive.org/web/20131015164041/http://dailyinfographic.com/the-psychology-of-abandonment
For “classics”, you are correct.
I should not have been surprised by Ulysses. I think I managed two sentences. Catch 22 wasn’t that bad. Atlas Shrugged, you have to realize you are there for the philosophy, not the breakneck speed. LoTR, I loved it.
I’m only surprised by the lack of Finnegan’s Wake. Got to admit, though, Atlas is actually well-paced (except for the speech). Rand’s screenwriting roots really show through in some aspects of the narrative construction.
l don’t know. I read Atlas Shrugged more than once.
And I liked Catch 22.
When I switched schools for 5th grade (proudly expelled (for “excessive insolence” from a literal convent school (Belgian war-bride mother with ambitions)) and met my new classmates at the local elite girl’s school, they asked me what I had read over the summer. No age-mate had ever asked me that before, so I was pleasantly surprised, and just pulled the most recent one from a summer’s vast reading and told them “Little Women”.
The incredulity that anyone would voluntarily read any long books, much less dozens of them over a limited period, struck them as unwarranted and unbelievable boasting (until they got to know me better) and marked the start of a social tension that lasted until I graduated of refusing to be shamed into conformity as afraid of/defiant of education. Over time, some of my classmates discovered the joys of reading, up to a point, but only within suitably restrained bounds. I was the only one in my class who was a notorious reader.
This was 6 decades ago, my friends, among people whose wealthy parents valued education (but apparently weren’t paying attention.) In retrospect, my parents eventually noticed me running thru the household bookcases and were cooperative about keeping me in funds for books I wanted, but they never actually talked about any of this. (No adult ever did.) Benign neglect.
I have seldom been a fan of literature, but I have enjoyed reading thousands of books. I read every single thing in my elementary school library that wasn’t in the girly section. And I read a few of those. Especially the ones with horses on the cover.
Literature, to a young man, generally means incredibly boring books about nothing much, populated by horrible people being stupid at each other. Literature is a perverse art form perpetrated by effite fops as a form of virtue signaling. Literature is books intended to be owned and displayed, not read. This is what I learned from my excellent high school education, in the two weeks we had to suffer through it before we moved on to actually good stories.
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I quite enjoyed “Catch 22”. The novel, not the incredibly bad movie. It’s one of the most accurate depictions of war ever penned.
A seventh grade teacher saw me reading Catch 22 on the playground and was shocked that I was a) reading it and b) for pleasure.
For the record, I read Catch-22 cover to cover, in AP English. It was considered “not required”, but after suffering through the excruciating The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, it was quite refreshing.
This was the same AP English class where one of the two teachers, after asking me what I’d read from the reading list over the summer, responded to The Brothers Karamazov with a sigh, an eyeroll, and “I never read it, it’s just too long”.
Part of the problem, as John McWhorter fulminated in his book on language and learning, is that some of the whole-word techniques used to teach reading have failed a generation, at least in some districts. For other students, reading is painfully slow, and thus painful. I see teens who look at reading as something one does as shallowly and quickly as possible, in order to get back to … social media, text-free games, and other visual-heavy media. At least two of those going at the same time, at all times.
But I also see teens lugging around fat fantasy-romance novels (Sarah J. Maas and the like), and other genre fiction, as well as reading on phones. So high literature might not have a large readership, but readers are still out there. (FWIW, I nibbled a few of the “must read” modern literature works of the past few years. No thank you. Nothing seemed to happen, or unpleasant people did things, or did not do things. Maybe I just had bad luck in book selections.)
You mentioned your sister reading Catch 22 from cover to cover.
Your mother also read Catch 22 from cover to cover; probably in one night. Throughout high school she would bring home an armload of library books almost every day, and read them all before school bus time in the morning. Definitely a speed reader, with total recall and understanding.
Around the time she read Catch 22 and other social agenda books she became very depressed, and her school counselor told her to stop the heavy reading for a while!
She got an early start in reading: The day she started first grade she was tested and could read fluently in a sixth grade reader; she was also reading and understanding stories in Reader’s Digest.