On Reading

There's been a lot of buzz about the Kindle, Amazon's new eBook reader, a device the size and weight of an ordinary paperback that can apparently store around 200 books at once; or if you prefer, a combination of novels, newspaper subscriptions, and blogs. Technophiles have been suggesting that the Kindle will usher in the era of the eBook (at last!), sounding (yet another) death knell for old-fashioned "reading devices" formed of ink and paper. This will be alarming news to the many book-lovers who seem to grow irrationally upset at the idea of the eBook, and whose worst fears were (yet again) confirmed by the doomsday rhetoric of the NEA's new study, "To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence," whose most widely reported result was that nearly half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books "for pleasure," whatever that means.

Looked at another way, the poll tells us that most 18-24 year olds are reading books on a regular basis, which suggests the printed book is in no grave danger of obsolescence. As for the others, while they may not have actually read a BOOK last year, that's not to say they're not regular readers. Plenty of people spend all day reading without ever picking up a book. If the Kindle takes off, we may finally get over the tendency to divide texts into things that are "books" and things that are "not books," as well as the superstition that if you're not sitting quietly, holding something in your hand, and turning its pages, you're not REALLY reading.

Like all superstitions, this one is grounded in the past, when books were the most common vehicle for learning. For most of us, our notion of what reading is, and what it involves, is still defined by traditional economic and physical considerations, from the texture of paper to the physical structures of libraries and bookstores. Books are still widely seen as the only reliable way to provide continuity over the generations, and continuity is how we accumulate knowledge, how we learn complex ideas about human nature and the ways of the world.

So deeply grounded is the superstition that books are indispensable that the hysteria surrounding the "death of reading" has mutated into the nonsensical slogan that reading is "good for you." The implication of the recent NEA poll result is clearly that those who read a book last year are somehow better off -- morally, emotionally, perhaps even spiritually -- than those poor, ignorant souls who didn't crack a single spine. This arrogance strikes me as misguided. If Americans are actually reading fewer and fewer books, who's to say that's so terrible? Maybe those who don't read are busy with their happy, fulfilled, distracting lives, with no need to escape into private fantasy. They may be far better off than those of us who spend half our lives with our noses stuck in books. Or Kindles.