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Death of Reading Greatly Exaggerated

Author Eggers pooh-poohs skeptical pundits, says it's 'as alive as ever'

By Victoria Floethe, Newser User

Posted Sep 29, 2008 4:39 PM CDT

(Newser) – Our bleak outlook on the future of reading owes itself to a doomsday reflex, the pervasive belief that things are bound to get worse, author Dave Eggers writes in Esquire. "It must be true, we think—just yesterday I saw some kid on the bus, and he wasn't reading a book!" But "few if any of these dire assumptions … are born out by any proof whatsoever."

More Americans are educated now than ever before, and books are easier to find and afford. Still, Eggers writes, "books, inherently, require faith. Faith in an author that he or she will reward the many hours you'll spend in those pages, faith that a good story will be told, a lesson will be learned, a light will be shone upon a dim corner of the world."

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (4)]

Dave Eggers talks to readers at the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. (AP Photo)

Dave Eggers, the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, founded the literary charity 826 Valencia, which publishes student writing. ((c) [177])

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We know about Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, Eldest ... but still we cluck with acknowledgment when some pundit tells us that books are being crushed by an all-powerful digital junta. -

American publishers put out 411,000 individual titles last year, an all-time record, and netted $25 billion--hardly a sagging industry. -

These 'it's worse now than before' studies are always framed to imply that the teens' parents, at the same age, read more. And that their grandparents, well, they read their asses off. But this is simply not true.
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Far more Americans are educated now than they were 100 years ago, and infinitely more go to college. As a result, there is now a pool of potential readers that is far larger than it was a century ago. -

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Death of Reading Greatly Exaggerated