Book signs point gloomily to the demise of literacy

0 Comments | Milwaukee Journal, The, Jan 1, 1995 | by Roger Miller

MANY signs and portents crossed the firmament of books in 1994, and most of them pointed to the indisputable fact that we are becoming a post- literate society, if we haven't already attained that state of easeful bliss.

But you say, "Miller, you fool, look at all these books flying out of the bookstores." To which I reply politely, of course yes, and look at all these faithful people scurrying to church, yet we live in a post-Christian society. Or, if that is too metaphysical for you, look at all these billions we spend on diet programs, yet as a nation we're porkier than ever.

As far as literacy is concerned, the selling of nearly 4 million copies of "In the Kitchen with Rosie," a book by Oprah's cook, signifies nothing, save possibly the death-jerks of a slowly decomposing corpse.

Could the corpse be revived? Oh, certainly, nothing is impossible. We might all shed tons of avoirdupois, too.

Meanwhile, there were these signs and portents. My favorite is the Book-of-the-Month Club, that good, gray institution sneered at by intellectuals because of its middlebrow taste. The BOMC has decided to do away with its 67-year-old editorial board, an independent panel of writers and critics who would meet once a month to discuss books before making recommendations to the club, recommendations that they thought were the best books, not the potential best-sellers.

What will BOMC replace it with? Nothing, really. Market research and sales records, not editorial or literary considerations, will decide which books get picked.

Other portents:

Gerald Howard, an editor at W.W. Norton, one of the last independent, literary publishing houses, had something to say about what he called a paradoxical "explosion in the availability of books" in an essay titled "The Curse of the Editorial Class" in Hungry Mind Review.

"There is an increasingly autonomic and savorless quality to all this publishing activity, as the remaining big publishing combines compete for the same books and seek to serve all the same markets," Howard writes. "An editorial culture that nurtured and fought for and insisted upon literary excellence has become marginalized and demoralized."

Hoping to attract readers, more writers than ever before are hitting the road, "touring" their books. Some are even doing stunts. What this is a sign of, I'm not sure. , but I fear it's not of health. Desperation comes to mind.

As it did to Nicholas Glee of The Bookseller magazine, whose name belies his message. Glee, noting a growing sense that our culture is post-literate, says publishers "are worried that books are in danger of being left behind" and so "try desperately to make books look more sexy." Once you start trying to make an unsexy thing look sexy, you might as well start cutting its shroud.

David Streitfeld, reporter on books and publishing for The Washington Post, remarks that with newspapers and magazines giving less space to books, publishers and writers are relying more on small, specialized publications like the Bloomsbury Review for attention. It's nice that someone or something is taking up the slack, but its effect will be either to marginalize books still further or to make newspapers and magazines less relevant to more people's lives. Probably both.