A short report in The Guardian on Saturday on a survey conducted by the National Reading Campaign tells us that lower income, non-professional families see readers as losers and loners, people who “don’t know how to live . . . an alien and unexciting tribe they seldom meet”.
I think I kind of guessed that already: that uncomprehending look from a distant relative or acquaintance when you begin to talk about a book you read, the sense that by even mentioning that you read a book you irrevocably distance yourself from them.
The article goes on to say that “reading was seen as isolating, while communal activities such as DVDs or Wii games were valued more”. These people apparently suffer overwhelming anxiety if they enter a bookshop, and the world of books is seen as “intimidating and unwelcoming”.
I find people who don’t read at all a bit of an alien species. What do they do on a train journey? – well, I know the answer to that: they just stare out of the window looking bored or fiddle around with their phones texting friends. So lacking in inner resources they are dependent on social interaction or gadgets to carry them through life’s dull periods. They never encounter the thoughts and stories of other people and miss out on the inherited myths of people around the world. This is a sort of poverty, but I seriously doubt that the recommendations of the report will go far to fix the problem:
- better book jacket design
- books available in less elitist environments
- book of the film to be sold in cinemas
- recent books to be made available on the Nintendo DS
- books to be available from vending machines
Anyone who sees all the brightly covered books in a supermarket will feel that the publishing industry has already done it best to make their products attractive. The vending machine idea is a bit crazy – you need to touch and feel a book, to flick through it, to look at the interior design and typeface in order to feel inspired to an impulse purchase. The Nintendo DS idea – well, many of the classics are already available in that format but its hard to believe anyone could get very far with them on such a limited screen size.
I can’t help but think back to the Mechanics Institutes of the 19th century. Wikipedia tells us that “small tradesmen and workers could not afford subscription libraries, so for their benefit, benevolent groups and individuals created “mechanics’ institutes” that contained inspirational and vocational reading matter, for a small rental fee. Later popular non-fiction and fiction books were added to these collections. The first known library of this type was the Birmingham Artisans’ Library, formed in 1823″.
In those days, reading was seen as the way to “better yourself”, to climb up out of poverty and to make material improvements to the life of you and your family. We live in a different place these days, and having started to write on this theme, I’m going to close now otherwise a few thousand words will follow on what has gone wrong and how to fix it.
