Last month, the National Endowment for the Arts released the results of a new study: “Reading At Risk” .Its findings, which are significant, and alarming, are as follows:

1. The percentage of adult Americans reading literature has dropped dramatically over the past 20 years.
2. The decline in literary reading parallels a decline in total book reading.
3. The rate of decline in literary reading is accelerating.
4. Women read more literature than men do, but literary reading by both groups is declining at significant rates.
5. Literary reading is declining among whites, African Americans, and Hispanics.
6. Literary reading is declining among all education levels.
7. Literary reading is declining among all age groups.
8. The steepest decline in literary reading is in the youngest age groups.
9. The decline in literary reading foreshadows erosion in cultural and civic participation.
10. The decline in reading correlates with increased participation in a variety of electronic media, including the Internet, video games, and portable digital devices.

Note that last one…

The Electronic Literature Organization posted news of these findings concurrently with reference to commentary in response by two prominent voices in the field of criticism pertaining to electronic literature (Monfort and Kirschenbaum). There is room for such commentary, not because of the findings themselves so much as because of the speculations made by the NEA about the reasons for the decline in reading. According to the NEA: “Literature now competes with an enormous array of electronic media. While no single activity is responsible for the decline of reading, the cumulative presence and availability of these alternatives have increasingly drawn Americans away from reading.”

The problem, as I see it, is not that the NEA fails to recognize electronic reading as literary reading. The problem is that they do not have enough reason to conclude otherwise. People love television, movies, the internet. Those media are not going anywhere any time soon. I suspect, though, that the results of a future study like this one would be radically different if the NEA were forced to regard these media as something worth consideration as art. I mean, if they had no choice. Wouldn’t it be nice if the vast majority of material on the internet, in the movies, and on television were things that fit the bill as literature, or art? Sure, the problem is that there are other bills to fit, and bills to pay – Media must make money, and in order to make money, it must be entertaining. Art, on the other hand, must be genuinely engaging in order to be significant.

Monfort put it well, saying: Instead of assuming that there’s only competition between different media, why not pose a national research agenda question like this one:

What role can literature play in a changing technological, media, and work environment, and how can it live on and develop in new ways, orally, in print, and digitally?

The kind of bickering and bias that the NEA is encouraging here, it will never solve the problem. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. It’s high time for a compromise. To summarize my thoughts on the subject:

The time is now that the modern-artist’s spirit of experimentation could be taken more seriously and further. Modernism could have embraced cultural developments, and could have added meaning to them, rather than blasting them as a “waste land”. Of course they were a cultural wasteland. They were brand-new, and those in control of the flow of culture we too busy lamenting these new things to contribute any legitimate expression to them.

What if Picasso had drawn Saturday morning cartoons? What if a comic book deserved the Pulitzer by the same old standards? What if the poet laureate was an eloquent rapper?

Comments? Roadmaps? Anyone?