“In 1958,” Rose Horowitch informs us in a lengthy and grim prognosis of reading habits published in the Atlantic, “the English translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago was the best-selling novel of the year.” Meanwhile, she says, “last year’s top-selling novel was Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest in the Hunger Games young-adult series.”We used to be so literary and now we're just a bunch of reading schlubs says The Atlantic. I've heard this a thousand times — we used to eat so much better, we used to read so much better, etc. When it's looked at more closely, that turns out not to be the case.
The point of the comparison? As a society, we once engaged with serious literature! We read the lofty and the literary, the rigorous and demanding. Today, we settle for the puerile and simplistic.
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We’re talking civilizational disaster here, folks.
Still, resist the impulse to leap into traffic. I’ve written about the reading crisis several times and share many of Horowitch’s concerns. Who wouldn’t? But there are a few things in this piece that rankle, starting with Doctor Zhivago
As the subtitle to this great piece says, "It’s Easy to Fear the Future When We Romanticize the Past." Definitely worth reading, as are all the pieces from Miller's Book Review.
