Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review July 15, 2004/ 26 Tamuz, 5764

Suzanne Fields

Fields
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

Much ado about a lot


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | The medium is the message, the texts are on television, and the Internet is awash in words, but fewer than half of Americans over 18 are actually reading "literature." The sound byte has replaced poetry, punditry has replaced the novel, and everything is a short story. Very short.

The invention of the printing press changed civilization. Johann Gutenberg's famously moveable type elevated the aspirations of all men and women, regardless of class and status, to learn to read the great books. Within a few centuries, great writing was available to anybody who wanted to read it.

High tech, by contrast, has rewired appetites to disdain or ignore the imaginative.

In a depressing new report called "Reading at Risk," the National Endowment for the Arts offers proof, as if we needed it, that we are no longer a nation that reads fiction, poetry and drama for pleasure. We will pay a very high price for this.

The most spectacular decline is among young men and women. These are the students who have been all but drowned in "relevance," political correctness and multiculturalism, beginning in the lower grades. Teachers pander to their personal "needs" and "values" rather than inspiring them to achievement and excellence. It hasn't worked. In 1982, nearly 60 percent of Americans between 18 and 24 read literature. That figure has dropped to 40 percent. The surveyors did not examine the category of fine nonfiction writing.

There are many reasons why our young have come to disdain what Matthew Arnold described as the best that's been thought and taught in the world, but foremost among them is the way our culture has been politicized. We've watched while standards and criteria for appraising literary quality are not-so-gradually eroded.

Once upon a time our political leaders were well-read and enjoyed a common heritage. This is evident in the writing of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. The letters written home by Civil War soldiers, many of whom had not finished grade school, reflected a knowledge of the Bible, of the classics, even of Shakespeare. In our own time, colleges required and produced well-rounded undergraduates. The self-taught man was encouraged, too. Harry Truman barely finished high school, but he was among our best-read presidents.


Donate to JWR


When I taught an English literature course at Catholic University in Washington in the late '60s, all sophomores, no matter what their major, were required to take a sweeping survey course that began with Chaucer and ended with T.S. Eliot. They learned to understand, appreciate and criticize the exuberance of the language describing the pilgrims of the Middle Ages marching to Canterbury Cathedral in the month of April, and to compare it to Eliot's modern wasteland where "April is the cruelest month." They learned how language reflects sensibility. More importantly, they discovered the pleasure of listening to rhythm and rhyme (and no rhyme) as the poet expresses his personal vision with just the appropriate word, just the right phrase to fuse sound and meaning.

But now, at some of our finest (or, at least, most expensive) universities, freshman and sophomores can substitute political criticism for literary criticism. Feminists implore women to study Shakespeare's plays only as a reflection of the status of women. Blacks lobby against "Huckleberry Finn," perhaps the greatest American novel, because Mark Twain wrote of "Nigger Jim," a noble and sympathetic character, in the rich and colloquial language of the time.

The metaphysical poets have always required a close reading of the words to reveal the poet's richness of imagination - John Donne describes the loving separation of husband and wife as "gold to airy thinness beat," suggesting the beauty of gold when pounded paper thin-but such is lost now because teachers usually don't bother to teach it.

Literature opens the mind to gorgeous metaphors and comparisons, creating new possibilities of perception. Great novels require the reader to break the bonds of time and the confining prejudices of place. This is heresy in our time, when literature is "deconstructed" to the point that the author's work is left in little pieces. I once told my engineering students that they could learn how to build a house, a bridge, a road without reading the poetry of Walt Whitman, but if they read him they might look differently at brick and mortar.

Literature doesn't teach "how," but reading forces reflection on "why." Says Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts and a poet himself: "As more Americans lose this capability, our nation becomes less informed, active and independent-minded. These are not the qualities that a free, innovative, or productive society can afford to lose." How true.


Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.

Up

Suzanne Fields Archives

© 2001, Suzanne Fields. TMS