The most pointless article I read last week—I assume it wasn’t purposely dense or AI-generated—came from Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic, with a headline that was designed for digital subscribers of the well-trafficked but rarely insightful magazine/website. “The End of Reading is Here,” and considering the thousands of similar “grand white papers” that’ve appeared in the last decade, I’m not sure why I clicked and consumed almost every word. Literary masochism, it’s possible, but really I wanted to see if Horowitch had anything new to say, something that would stick with me for an hour, even it wasn’t “sharing the good news."
We’re told that in 2022, according to the National Endowment for the Arts (didn’t Trump promise to close that down, as in permanently?) fewer than half of adults read a book and just 38 percent read a novel or short story. Then she puts the Vice Hat on, saying “Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book. Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet.” So what? I don’t gamble (save small wagers with my kids) but don’t look down my nose at those who do. And, judging by the amount of mostly young people feverishly tapping their phones at ballgames, betting on whether, say Paul Skenes’ next pitch will be a strike, it ain’t for “leisure” they’re doing it, it’s the pharmaceutical-like rush, and maybe 55 bucks to their account.
The Atlantic is reportedly very generous in its fees, and I suspect that Horowitch, perhaps paid by the word, was exploiting Laurene Powell Jobs’ largesse. What else explains this no-shit! paragraph: “Americans also get much less of their news through reading than they once did. In1975, about half of 20-somethings said they read the newspaper every day. Today less than 10 percent do. Most Americans now get the news on their phones and laptops, and 40 percent say they prefer to watch or listen to online news rather than read it.”
“The End of Reading” resembles a college senior’s thesis more than a legitimate “grown-up” essay. In 1975, as anyone who cares knows, daily newspapers were fat, filled with news (however slanted depending on the paper), sports, comics, finance and gossip. And on trains, whether local commuters, Amtrak regionals or a subway, riders passed the time with a paper or book. On an airline flight, most came prepared for the trip with reading material, there was hardly any “raw-dogging,” and for those who did stare straight ahead, it was wondered if they were just stupid.
I’ve linked to the Horowitch’s article above, and haven’t the patience to go on. I’ll set it aside with one beaut of a sentence: “America, in other words, isn’t illiterate. It’s postliterate.”
I’ve no illusions about the publishing industry; it’s in tatters, and I don’t like that at all but am hardly visionary enough to figure out how that might change. Maybe Horowitch, not yet 30, will tap the Atlantic rhinoceros bank and, in a year or two, write another 40,000 words that offers advice.
Meanwhile, I still read books (almost exclusively fiction), as do my wife and two sons, an age rage that spans from 71 down to 31. I’m on an Elizabeth Strout kick now, and it’s low-key exhilarating, especially this year’s excellent The Things We Never Say—the precise prose trailing the complex protagonist Artie Dam is impeccable, and the few TDS passages are inoffensive, and Strout doesn’t demean herself like George Saunders and Sam Lipsyte—and 2013’s The Burgess Boys. I find Strout’s many novels similar to peak-Anne Tyler, a sincere compliment.
Other books, but not many, hit the garbage can or donation pile after 70 pages. Not so with Jenny Jackson’s The Shampoo Effect, which I fired after only 30 pages, so cliché-ridden that it could’ve been a long Twitter thread. Jackson, an editor at Knopf, had a best-seller in 2023 with Pineapple Street, which I finished but remember nothing about.
Here’s a typical paragraph from The Shampoo Effect that emphasizes her ludicrous prose: “Caroline had the ingrained snobbishness of all native New Yorkers, the view that life outside the city was provincial and possibly Republican, but Van’s parents [who live in a small Massachusetts town] had a Prius in the driveway, NPR on the radio, a copy of The New York Times dismantled on the counter, and Caroline breathed a sigh of relief… They sat around the table and talked about immigration and Ukraine and sustainable fisheries.”
Is this novel a parody? Doubtful, but as it’s bound to sell a lot of copies (Jackson’s in the right profession to call in favors), maybe someone can clue me in. Or not. I’m now erasing this Instagram-accessible book from my mind.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023