Oh blow it out your ass.

I read less than I used to. I am convinced that it's because I am used to the backlit computer screen and books tire my eyes. I got an ebook years ago and the backlight and one finger pageturning hooked me on reading and I read a lot. ebook didn't catch on and they no longer service it.

Classics were very cheap on ebook. Public domain and no printing costs. I started rereading books I read in HS and learned to my delight, that the books I hated then (Dickens), I still hate and I like the ones I liked (George Eliot).

Not sure from whence the hostility of #1 springs, but I thought was an interesting run through quality nonfiction, with nice insights into the nature of various styles of writing and thinking. Thanks and welcome, Sean!

I guess I went off a little with my comment, but Sean's article was 1.) wrong-headed as to the meaning of the word "literature" and 2.) used this misunderstanding as a very thin peg on which to hang the laundry list of his own reading. The article was self-infatuated, and that always rubs me the wrong way.

Non-fiction isn't literature -- the Chronicle of Higher Education definition is absolutely correct on that point. That's not to say it's inferior; it just means fit it under another name. Here's what my Webster's Second College Edition says: "1. the profession of an author; production of writings, esp. of imaginative prose, verse, etc. 2. a) all writings in prose or verse, esp. those of an imaginative or critical character, without regard to their excellence: often distinguished from scientific writing, news reporting, etc. [Emphasis mine.]

Sean, welcome to BC.

While I share your concern re. the 'arbitrary', restrictive category of "literature " (novels, poetry, drama--while leaving out non-fiction) -- and your implicit concern for the potential brain hard-wiring capabilities of video (sound like you've read the great Neil Postman?) and other non-literate narrative devices, I think you got a couple of things a bit off.

The study was by the NEA, and it showed that:

* there is a recent, lagre decline in READING across all age groups, races and genders; Any reading. All reading.

* Over the last 10 years, Americans who said they read any book in the past year has dropped from 60.9 percent to 56.6 percent;

* Rates for literature (defined in the report as "fiction, poetry and drama, without any regard to quality or genre") have declined even faster;

* specific "literature" category reading is declining among all adults, regardless of age, race, ethnicity and income, with the least interest in reading reported among the youngest.

* 46.7 percent of adults say they are reading literature vs 56.9 percent two decades ago.

* Close to two-thirds of men don't read at all

========

Just a few corrections and/or further breakdown for the record.

How 'bout those American men, tho? The ones still kinda running the country and the world?

Big on Bush.

Don't read at all.

Never read a book.

Proud of it, I suppose.

feh. We're in deep shit.

From the OED:
1. Acquaintance with 'letters' or books; polite or humane learning; literary culture. Now rare and obsolescent. (The only sense in Johnson and in Todd 1818.)
2. Literary work or production; the activity or profession of a man of letters; the realm of letters.
3. a. Literary productions as a whole; the body of writings produced in a particular country or period, or in the world in general. Now also in a more restricted sense, applied to writing which has claim to consideration on the ground of beauty of form or emotional effect. light literature: see LIGHT a.1 19.
b. The body of books and writings that treat of a particular subject.
c. colloq. Printed matter of any kind.
----------
3a. is the only one of particular import here, but I see nothing in here about the factuality of a piece of writing being a criterion.

Here, too, is one of the OED's definitions for "literary":
3. Of or pertaining to, or of the nature of, literature. a. Pertaining to letters or polite learning. b. Pertaining to books and written compositions; also, in a narrower sense, pertaining to, or having the characteristics of that kind of written composition which has value on account of its qualities of form. literary dinner, lunch(eon), party, prize; also literary adviser: one who gives advice or information on literary matters; literary agent (see quot. 1960); also literary agency; literary circle (see CIRCLE n. 21); literary criticism = CRITICISM 2 (of works of literature); so literary critic, literary-critical adj.; literary editor: (a) the editor of the literary section of a newspaper; (b) the editor of a book of collected writings; so literary-edit vb., -editorship; literary executor (see EXECUTOR 3); literary history (e.g. of a legend, a historical personage or event, etc.): the history of the treatment of, and references to, the subject in literature; literary property: (a) property which consists in written or printed compositions; (b) the exclusive right of publication as recognized and limited by law; literary world (see WORLD n. 16b).
----
Granted, it's a bit circular when "literary" and "literature" define each other, but again, the definition of literature is much broader than the Webster's.

The most relevant words here for my purposes are "applied to writing which has claim to consideration on the ground of beauty of form or emotional effect."

True, most scientific writing and news reporting do not hae much "claim to consideration on the ground of beauty of form of emotional effect." But there's a big jump from saying that a dry technical paper is not literature to the assumption that a book by Stephen Jay Gould or an essay by Alan Lightman is not literary because it happens to contain some facts. We might read the memoirs of, say, Bill Clinton because we want to gain factual information, but we read the memoirs of Vladimir Nabokov and Frank McCourt for their "beauty of form" and "emotional affect."

As for being self-infatuated, I will not argue. If that bothers you, you shouldn't read blogs.

re: restrictive category of "literature" -- I agree with both Sean and Welch; the problem comes when using "literature" as a standard for measuring reading, which apparently, the study didn't do.

They polled for "reading" and then winnowed the question down to the specific category, ie "literature".

Anyway, I happen to believe that any reading is good for the brain, (unless, of course, it's Anne Coulter, Laura Ingraham, or Bill O'Reilly.)

I agree that the decline in overall reading is troubling, and that there was much in the article I didn't even try to address. The part about the definition of "literature" was what rubbed me the wrong way, so it's what I went off on.

I read so much I don't have time to read

The best way of making time to read is to commute to work by mass transit.

and have a book with you

Non-fiction isn't literature...

That simply isn't true. Plato's Dialogues? Augustine's Confessions? Montaigne's and Orwell's Essays? Pepys's Diary? Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson? All non-fiction, all indisputably literature.

I don't mean to say that any non-fiction could be called literature, but I think it's simplistic to claim that none could be.

philosophy isn't exactly non-fiction either - it's in a nether world of "ideas"

man, i wish i had known this back when i was reading all of that kierkegaard and sartre.

"it's a nether world of ideas"
"it's a nether world of ideas"
"it's a nether world of ideas"
"it's a nether world of ideas"

...

I think part of the reason I don't like the classification of "non-fiction" as outside of literature is that "non-fiction" is really rather of a non-category. It makes sense to call something "fiction": we can probably agree on what that means. The same goes for history, poetry, sports writing, criticism, etc. though there are always oddballs that don't quite fit. But creating a literary (or non-literary) quality of "non-fiction" is kind of like creating a zoological taxonomy of "birds" and "non-birds." The category of "bird" makes sense. While sometimes we might have reason to refer to those things that collectively aren't birds, as we might if we were contrasting feathered to non-feathered creatures, I think it makes little sense to reify this category by creating a class of "non-birds." Would that category be limited to animals? to living beings? Would a clipboard, or a committee, be a non-bird? This gets close to Borges's "ancient Chinese taxonomy" that groups animals into classes like those that look like flies from a distance and those that have just tipped over a water pitcher. I think we can all agree that, say, Pepys' diary is a work of non-fiction. Is a phonebook non-fiction? It's a book, and not fiction. Is a lamp non-fiction? It's not a book full of invented characters and situations.

I say non-fiction myself because people will know what I mean, and because it represents so many good things left out of the NEA's definition of what is literature. But as a classifcation, it's a bit like "people of color" to define people who are visibly not of entirely European ancestry. It's a useful concept, but there really is no meaningful class of "people of color," while classifications like Asian, Chinese, Muslim, Bantu, Creole, Pacific Islander, while none is entirely watertight, they are not merely a lump group defined by the subtraction of a privileged minority.

Sean's a typical reader; he thinks too much.

xxoo,
Shark

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