The NEA has released a disturbing--but not surprising--report on the reading habits of Americans. Entitled "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America," the report builds on a survey of 17,000 adults that was done by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002. What it shows is what we already know--only more so. People who care about books and reading--teachers, parents, librarians, publishers--know very well that reading is a disappearing pastime, and that the reading of literature in particular is an increasingly endangered activity. The NEA study grounds that sense in some powerful statistics. I quote from Scott McLemee's Chronicle of Higher Education piece on yesterday's unveiling of the study at the New York Public Library:

The findings in the report show a steady drop, over two decades, in the percentage of Americans who read books of any sort -- with a much steeper decline in the consumption of literature. (The report defines literature as fiction, poetry, and drama, without regard to genre or quality.) In 1992, for example, 60.9 percent of those surveyed indicated that they had read a book of some sort during the previous year. By 2002, that figure had shrunk to 56.6 percent, a decline of 7 percent.

When asked about literature in particular, the change was even more marked. In 1992, 54 percent of respondents indicated they had read a literary work of some kind. That proportion fell to 46.7 percent in 2002, a decrease of almost 14 percent. Besides declining twice as fast as book reading in general, literary reading appears to have taken an especially hard hit over the past decade. From 1982 to 1992, it decreased by a mere 5 percent -- a rate that has accelerated, the report suggests, with the "cumulative presence and availability" of "an enormous array of electronic media."

The figures in the new report show considerable variation in reading habits across demographic categories. Higher income and educational levels correspond to higher percentages of literature consumption, for example. Gender made a difference, too: 55.1 percent of women reported in 2002 that they had read literature over the previous year, while only 37.6 percent of men did. And among respondents identifying themselves as white, 51.4 percent reported reading literature -- nearly twice the rate among Hispanics, at 26.5 percent. The corresponding figure for African-Americans was 37.1 percent, while those tabulated as "other" came in at 43.7 percent.

[...]

The steepest decline -- and the one that the report notes with most alarm -- has occurred among young adults. In 1982, respondents ages 18 to 34 were the group most likely to report the recreational reading of literature. Over the intervening decades, they have become the group least likely to do so (except for some segments of the population over 65).

The change has been particularly striking among those ages 18 to 24. The report says that, over the past two decades, the share of the adult population engaged in literary reading declined by 18 percent, from 56.9 percent in 1982 to 43 percent in 2002. But for the 18-to-24 cohort, the drop has been faster, sinking from 59.8 percent to 42.8 percent, a decline of 28 percent.

"Reading at Risk" states that the trends among young readers (or, perhaps, nonreaders) suggest that "unless some effective solution is found, literary culture, and literacy in general, will continue to worsen."

"Indeed, at the current rate of loss," it says, "literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century."

The full study is available from the NEA in .pdf format.

UPDATE: More at USA Today, The Washington Post, and Joanne Jacobs.

I've actually been working with this dataset a lot this summer so it was a worlds collide thing to see this post. The data have fairly detailed stuff on pretty much all cultural consumption, not just books. All 5 waves are freely available at:
http://www.cpanda.org/data/profiles/sppa.html

When asked why not, NEA chairman Dana Goia responded that "the National Endowment for the Arts shouldn't try to tell the culture what to do, or not to do."

What a outlandish statement. They tell the culture what to do or not to do with their distribution of money for projects. Projects that receive money are encouraged, projects that do not receive money are discouraged.

Someone needs to get our of their government cocoon and join the real world.

This information is sad but not unexpected, with so many media competing especially for young people's attention. I do think things are perhaps not quite as dire as they seem: after all, e-texts and films are not included in the tally. Who's to say a regular reader of some of the more thoughtful blogs out there is going to be less politically engaged than a semiannual reader of pulp fiction?

Technology has bypassed the novel. It's that simple.

I read a wide variety of texts on the web. I seldom open a book. I'm don't believe I'm missing anything. I used to be an English lit teacher. The English department is now a monastery for a disappearing religion.

Life changes. Technology changes.

Please tell me why we should be weeping over this change. I know that it seems self-evident to the English professor that this is a terrible thing. When I read Erin's list of must read books recently, I was totally unimpressed. Most of it was of the social cause, how awful everything thing is variety.

So, I'll ask again. If the average citizen has the opportunity to construct a happy, productive and interesting life, why wallow in the social cause crap? My perspective is that the English lit crowd wants misery to prevail so that they will have a great cause to address. What if that era is just over?

And before you accuse me of being an illiterate, I'm pretty well read in the classic literature, with a special emphasis on the great Russian writers.

Wow, Stephen...Tolkien, Agatha Christie, Gone With the Wind and Tom Sawyer are of the "social cause, how awful everything thing is variety"? That's half the list, and only half of the other half (Roots & Good Earth) seems like it would fit neatly into the now-standard "academic" agenda.

Anyway, I'm sure electronic media have a lot to do with these stats, but I can't help but wonder whether the poor teaching of reading & writing skills in public schools (not to mention what happens in college) play a role, too.

"...literary reading correlates [...] with civic and cultural engagement..."

I'm not sure how in the world the above statement can be justified. What is the evidence? That literature professors bemoan of social injustice? Statisical correlation does not equate to causality, so who cares.

Second, I'm not even sure what it means (what exactly is "cultural engagement"?). Although I lament that people are not reading (as much) literature anymore, I have serious doubts that the effects are "very frightening for a democracy."

"Someone needs to get our of their government cocoon and join the real world"...Dana Gioia has scarcely been living in a government cocoon. He is a successful executive (was VP of Marketing at General Foods), in addition to himself being a poet.

Perhaps if high school teachers and college professors were to back off from using lit classes to promote social activism, silly narcissistic post-modern navel-gazing, and trendy multiculturalism, and get back to really reading and discussing good books, their students might discover that reading is actually interesting and even joyful, instead of just being a forced march through the swamps of political correctness.

Perhaps this is somehow related to your previous post "What 2 Read When U R 12". Arguably, emulating the underclass is a bad way to encourage the pursuit of literature. (The Victorian idea of "uplift", that is raising the vision, the standards, and the prospects of the underclass, seems like a somewhat nobler ideal). I understand why our culture is trying to sexualize and commercialize ever younger children, but one would expect the educators to know why this is so destructive to children and to society. More importantly, you would expect them to defend the rightful innocence of youth instead of trampling it underfoot in the name of "justice" or "health" or "relevance". Establish and enforce meaningful standards regarding meaningful knowledge/understanding of literature (as literature, not as social commentary) and these trends might be reversed. And not just for the teachers, but for the students as well.

Why should this come as a surprise? We're now reading the insipid drivel of Tupac Shakur in the schools as if it were literature. I know I shouldn't ask, but how much lower can we sink?

The barbarians are no longer at the gate. The gates have been smashed into kindling and they are dancing around the bonfires in front of their dung encrusted yurts.

From National Review's "The Corner"

I agree:

YOU'RE NOT READING THIS [John J. Miller]
Color me unimpressed by the new survey funded by the National Endowment for the Arts claiming that Americans are reading less literature. Yes, it's probably true. But it doesn't follow that just because Americans are reading fewer novels, they're actually doing less reading. That's what's strange about the NEA study--it isn't about literacy, but about reading fiction. Personally, I love to read fiction. I'm reading a novel right now. But lots of people prefer non-fiction. Some just don't have time for novels, in part because they're doing things like reading The Corner. "This report documents a national crisis," says Dana Gioia, chief of the NEA. I don't think so. It just means that despite the good efforts of Oprah and others, 10 percent fewer Americans read novels than they did 20 years ago. A national crisis? Maybe if you're a federal agency that thinks it can address the problem with a bigger budget.
Posted at 07:59 AM

Other than the newspaper, most people I know read practically zilch.

Some people read only the TV schedule.

One guy has a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

They all seem up on current affairs and pretty good at their jobs, so I never thought of it as a problem.

Just a choice.

Lack of time, lack of interest -- I don't know.

I think this is related to the loss of the notion of "bettering oneself" (notice how it's got to be placed between ironic inverted commas these days). A quaint, Victorian, outdated notion.

I don't know. I find it kind of hard to be really, tremendously upset or even all that surprised at the statistics in the report.

Granted, I'm an avid reader, and if all the bookstores on earth were to disappear, I would mourn for a long, long time. (Although I probably now own more books than I will be able to read in what remains of my life).

Just a couple of observations:

1. I began reading for "enjoyment" more heavily once I had done with the required humanities classes in college. (And I was one of the lucky ones; I took Great Books and was exposed to the minimum of po-mo navel gazing). But I do agree with those who argue that the way college-level lit courses are taught do a lot to turning people off of literature. (One of the great gleeful joys of my life was pulling a complex novel off the shelf, shortly after graduation, and realizing that no one would ask me for an analysis, or a discussion of themes, or a five-paragraph essay. I was free! I could read and enjoy, and if I lost track of some of the subplots, it wouldn't matter to anyone but me).

2. I also agree with those who say a lot of modern literature is so problem-oriented and depressing that it's not much fun to read. I read very few of what would be considered "best sellers" but I do belong to a book group where we've read a number of modern novels. A lot of them are annoyingly weepy and seem designed to manipulate the feelings of those reading. And that irritates me. I don't like feeling manipulated. I like Victorian literature - especially Trollope - he doesn't spend pages and pages and pages as a first-person protagonist justifying to the reader why he "had" to cheat on his girlfriend, how it's really "OK."

I also hate graphic sex in novels. Call me a prude, but I do. (I kind of wish there was a little ratings system, maybe inconspicuously printed under the copyright information, that let you know things like: there will be scenes involving a child being hurt. there is graphic sex. there is violence and gore. there is a lot of really creative cussing.)

3. I read and enjoy a lot of what serious-literature types would consider somewhat trite or lowbrow. I love mystery novels, especially the so-called "cozies" and the British-countryside-policeman types, and find them oddly comforting to read.

4. I guess I'm just a really weird person; I'm in that supposed 4.3% who'd rather read a book than watch tv. Maybe the 95.7% of Americans get some kind of supermagical wonderful cable channels I don't get, but it seems to me 90% of the stuff on is reality programming and the other 10% is infomercials, neither of which floats my boat.

I like blogs and read a lot of them, but it's not the same for me as a good novel. I would say that I read blogs instead of reading things like US News and World Report, not instead of reading novels or nonfiction books.

5. I read a lot of non-fiction too; well-written non-fiction is as enjoyable (and I think as edifying on the human condition, especially biographies and histories) as novels are. But I'm not sure I'm willing to buy the statistic that "oh, it's just that people aren't reading NOVELS, they're still reading."

6. Kids are overscheduled these days and so it's less common for the bookworm way of spending free time to develop. (I remember the long, mostly-unscheduled summers when I was a kid; much of the time when it was too hot or too rainy to be out was spent reading. To this day I describe "contentment" to people like this: Me, at ten, stretched out on the living room sofa on a rainy summer day with a big stack of newly checked out library books next to me.)

7. It could be a generational thing. Relatively few of my students are avid readers, or at least the ones I've talked to much about it. (Usually I can spot the readers, too.) If it is, maybe that does concern me, for the selfish reason of my wanting there to be ready access to books and libraries in my declining years.

8. Parents are a big influence. I think part of the reason I'm a bookworm is that my mom was (and is) always, always reading (I probably got my fondness for mysteries from her, now that I think about it) and my dad read a lot of "technical" books. And there were always books in the house. And books were given as Christmas and birthday presents. And weekly trips to the library were a one of the priveliges that was immune from being taken away when either my brother or I was being punished...My grandparents were bookish as well, even if my one granddad left school after 6th grade...

This is going to sound pretty self-righteous, but as a rabid reader of literary fiction from an early age, I frequently find myself way, way more emotionally mature than a lot of people around me who were not. I'm 24, and tend to spend time with people older than me, many of whom are now (especially those entering their late 20's/early 30's) having major psycological/emotional crises ultimately arising from their lack of personal depth. Reading novels and delving deeply into the well-imagined psychology of others (which can, granted, also be done through film/painting/etc, though less thoroughly) makes us more whole as people, and better able to live our own lives. These lessons can, of course, be learned through experience - but would you rather actually suffer through a mutually destructive, psychologically poisonous romantic relationship, or just read about one and learn the lessons that way? I feel pretty deeply fulfilled, particularly in my relationships with women and friends, and while I can't attribute all of this to the novels I've read (I also have some pretty awesome parents), I think they do deserve a substantial chunk of the credit.

For those who have allowed electronic media to override their urges to novel-reading, behold: Project Gutenberg!

http://www.promo.net/pg/

Two factors which may represent countertrends:

1)It's encouraging that bloggers who write long, complex essays--I'm thinking of Steven den Beste and Bill Whittle, in particular--have nevertheless developed strong following. Somebody out there is willing to read more than just snippets.

2)The bookstore business has been doing pretty well...Borders/Barnes & Noble show little sign of going out of business.

I hope Erin O'Connor doesn't mind. Given some of the comments here and in other posts on Critical Mass, I'd like to ask commenters in this thread the following questions in the most open, non-hostile way possible:

1) What is it you believe English professors are doing in their research and teaching?
2) How did you come to your conclusions?
3) What is it you think we should be doing?

Call me a skeptic. I do not see a lot of Barnes and Noble stores closing, so a quick Google for "total book sales" yielded the following http://www.fonerbooks.com/booksale.htm

Working backwards I calculate that book sales at some of America's largest bookstores has increased by about $1,490,000,000 from 2000 to 2003. While market share increases may expain some of this it does not mesh with such large drops in reading habits cited in this report.

I wonder how much "___ for Dummies" accounts for those sales.

From today's New York Times Letters to the Editor section:
http://tinyurl.com/69j5p

"Public library visits have more than doubled in the past decade, to nearly 1.2 billion, and circulation continues to grow."
Carol Brey-Casiano
President, American Library Association

I don't know that I've come to a conclusion about this study. I am convinced that there are multiple forms of literacy that are not limited to reading novels and books (and, yes, I was trained in an English department).

But to answer one of the questions raised above: As I understand it, some of the top-selling books in Barnes and Noble and Borders are "How to" books and quilting manuals, and of course most bookstores now profit considerably from selling CDs and DVDs.

Actually, as a bookstore employee, I have to disagree with the previous poster's contention that bestsellers are primarily nonfiction how-to books. Fiction sales are so much higher than nonfiction that we keep two bestseller lists; the nonfiction bestsellers tend to be historical, with the occasional South Beach Diet-type book that manages to hang on for a while.

For fiction, it's things such as The DaVinci Code and The Secret Lives of Bees and The Life of Pi that hang around forever; for non-fiction, the latest biography stays at the top for a few weeks, then you get things such as The Devil in the White City or books by H.W. Brands on our Founding Fathers. Or John Krakauer.

And if I recall correctly, we get a much better margin on books than CDs and DVDs; they are the draw, but the books are the bread and butter.

I wonder how much of the flatness in book purchasing and the decline of reading is caused by the rising relative price of books compared to alternatives. I've never calculated a price index, but it seems to me that cheap mass-market paperbacks are no longer very cheap, and trade paperbacks and hardbacks seem to be priced higher relative to alternative pasttimes than they used to. The Internet provides lots to read for free now, which makes the price differential even more striking.

That would be consistent with increasing library visits, as cited by a commentor above.

You spelled Dana Gioia's last name wrong -- twice.
(The correct spelling is G-I-O-I-A.)