12:21 PM PST, November 15, 2008
November is, and has been since 1998, National Novel Writing Month. According to recent studies, many more Americans are writing instead of reading, and no wonder.
One of
Paul Simon's songs begins with the feeling observation "When I think
back on all the crap I learned in high school/It's a wonder I can think
at all." By the same token, when I consider the fiction I was forced
to read far too soon in that ill-remembered milieu, I can't blame anyone
for not cracking a book after graduation. Wuthering Heights and The
Scarlet Letter I especially recall as sheer torment, inflicted by the
overworked bored on the restless apathetic, taught in a total vacuum
with no attention paid to the utterly foreign worlds in which they were
set, or the life and times of the authors who created them. What
astounds me most is that these books and others of their dour ilk are
still being forced upon luckless high schoolers in the same sullen,
context-free manner decades later, in a landscape that has changed so much
that the name Miranda no longer evokes a brave new world or even Huxley
(another author I read far too soon), but instead a cop-uttered formula.
Incredibly, it's still a self-perpetuating given that no one
voluntarily reads a novel after high school, and since this sole brush
with literature will be the last, it needs must be forcibly administered
like bitter medicine. For all too many the loathing engendered lasts a
lifetime...a stunted, light-deprived lifetime. Some disturbing
information can be found at this site,
beginning with "1/3 of high school graduates never read another book
for the rest of their lives." I won't go into the 1/3 of the population
that doesn't graduate at all.
Still,
there's hope. Lots of people survive high school with their love of
reading intact, as I did. Like many others, I look forward to at least a
minor renaissance with the upcoming presidency. A holistic approach to
literature might come into fashion, thanks to the Internet's invaluable
ease of access and wealth of resources that make learning an at least
physically effortless pleasure, and galvanize independent spirit of
inquiry. Miranda just might rediscover that dream she believed in -- I
re-read Brave New World recently online, and it was terrific. I only
hope that a Google search someday finds her Shakespeare version in less
than the few hundred entries it currently entails.
A wealth of sites offer the entire world's best reading at no cost, and here are three of my favorites:
The Digital Book Index
CK
A wealth of sites offer the entire world's best reading at no cost, and here are three of my favorites:
The Digital Book Index
CK
