Is Reading Passé?
A friend loses his books mojo
This column is something of a head fake, as it’s not a standard column. Nor is it an Ask Matt installment. Instead, it comes as a result of a dialogue I was having this week with an old friend, “Skip Intro.” That’s the nom de guerre he has chosen for this piece, since Skip is both publicity-shy, and presently trying to evade authorities for reasons he can’t go into until certain statutes of limitations elapse.
Tom McGuane likes to say that drinking is the writer’s black lung disease. Another curse of the profession — if “profession” isn’t too strong a word — is that many, if not most, tend to be procrastinators. (Though in fairness to writers as a species, most of the ones I know never put off occasions to drink.) As someone whose job it is to string nouns and verbs together, along with the occasional adverb (reluctantly), I’ll do just about anything to avoid writing. Even more writing. Which is why I often fall into sustained email dialogues with friends/frenemies when I should be filing something.
Such was the case with what transpired below. Skip reached out to me in a bit of an existential crisis, suffering from reading anhedonia. He’s seen too much. He’s read it all. And reading doesn’t seem to bring him the pleasure it once did. Because I’m not just here to look pretty, I tried to save Skip from his own despair. To flick my Zippo in Skip’s darkness — not to take this in an erotic direction. (Skip and I are platonic friends, as our wives can testify.) I don’t know that I succeeded. But I found the paces he was putting me through a useful exercise. There is no better way to clarify your own faith than to confront Doubting Thomases/Skips. So to kick off our dialogue, here’s Skip Intro:
Skip Intro: Is reading passé? I don't mean reading the news, or the web, or even second-rate content that you find on Substack. {Ed. Note: Ouch.} I mean: novels, literature, long feature articles. My kids don't read books AT ALL, but they read a lot every day. Especially my son who has been on an iPad or a laptop since he was five. He would never read a "book,” but he probably spends six hours a day reading modern content.
I remember Robert E. Lee saying that he wouldn't read novels because they degrade the mind. He would only read poetry and drama.
I'm going through a bit of a content drought personally, and am wondering if my ingrained English major behavior of always having a book at hand is passé. After all, 95% of the world gets its entertainment through streaming services, movies, and social media. People don't really read for pleasure (or time killing) that much anymore. Don't you think the average person reads one book a quarter?
So my question is: media has moved on from poetry to novels to plays to movies to TV to streaming and social media. In the same way that floppy disks are comical now, is reading a novel suddenly archaic?
Matt Labash: I would agree that it’s factually inaccurate to say people don't read. They probably read more words per day than they ever have, since they're constantly on their screens. (They write more, too. Even if it's mostly in emojis.) The stat I've seen most recently is that over half the population hasn’t read a book in the last year. Although people who say they “read” because they read their phones all day is kind of like someone who equates eating at Noma with eating dried Frosted Flakes out of the box. Both technically involve “eating,” but they’re not quite the same experience.