In the house where I grew up, we had a room we called the library. It wasn't
a real library, ofcourse, it was just a small den dominated by a television
set. But there were bookshelves builtinto all four walls, and hundreds
of books---hardback books with spines of many colors---surrounded us in
that room. The books, collected by my parents and grandparents throughouttheir
lifetimes, were a part of my childhood. My generation---the generation
that came of age in the 1950s and 1960s---may be the lastone to know that
feeling, the feeling of being surrounded by millions of words; those wordswere
the products of years of work by authors famous and obscure. For now in
the midst ofthe 1970s, we are seeing a subtle but unmistakable turning
away from such things. Thehouses of America, I fear, may soon include
no room for libraries. The hardcover book---thatsymbol of the permanence
of thought, the handing down of wisdom from one age to the next---may
be a new addition to our list of endangered species. I have a friend who
runs a bookstore in a Midwestern college town. He has found that he cannotsell
hardback books; paperbacks are his stock in trade, and even those are
a disappointmentto him. "You know how er used to see people carrying around
book bags?" he tells me. "Well,now I look out the window of my shop, and
all I see are students carring packages from therecord stores. The students
aren't reading any more. They're listening to albums." And indeed he may
be right. Stories of problems young people have with reading are not new
,but trend seems to be worsening. Recently the chancellor of the University
of Illinois's branchcampus in Chicago said that 10 percent of the freshman
at his university could read no betterthan the average eighth grader. As
dismal a commentary as this is, there is an even morechilling aspect to
it: of those college freshmen whose reading skills were equivalent to
the sixthto eight-grade level, the chancellor reported that many had ranked
in the top half of their high-school classes. A professor at the same
university said that even after four years on campus, some of thecollege
graduates could hardly read or write. And the ramifictions this situation
brings to thenation are obvious, and will become even more so in the years
to come. Those ramifictions arealready being felt in the cultural marketplace
. A first work of fiction, if it has any luck at all, willsell perhaps
3000 copies in its hardback edition. Publishers and authors know not to
expectmuch better thn that. And a record album? Well, a new group called
Boston recently released analbum of the same name. It is their first record
, so far it has sold 3.5 million copies. Much of the problem is that we
live in a passive age. To listen to a record album, to sit througha movie
, to watch a television show---all require nothing of the cultural consumer
, save hismere presence. To read a book, though, takes an act of will on
the part of the consumer. Hemust genuinely want to find out wht is inside
. He cannot just sit there; he must do something,even though the something
is as simple an action as opening the book, closing the door andbeginning
to read. In generations before amy own, this was taken for granted as
an important part of life. Butnow, in the day of the "information retrieval
system," such a reverence is not being placed onthe reding, and then saving
, of books. If a young American reads at all, he is far more likely topurchase
a paperback that may be flipped through and then thrown away. In a disposableage
, the book for keeping and rereading is an anachronism, a ponderous dinosaur
in ahighspeed society.