Reading in America

　

By Jerilyn Watson

Broadcast: August 2, 2004

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VOICE ONE:

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Gwen Outen. This week our program examines reading in the United States.

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VOICE ONE:

Americans have read a lot in recent weeks about a study. It shows that for the first time in modern history, fewer than half the adults in the country read literature.

A federal agency that gives money to the arts announced the findings. The National Endowment for the Arts is the official arts organization of the United States government.

The report says forty-seven percent of American adults read novels, short stories, plays or poetry in two-thousand-two. That was down ten percentage points from twenty years earlier.

The study is called "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America." The Census Bureau, the agency that collects facts about the population, did the study.

VOICE TWO:

Researchers asked seventeen-thousand people about their reading. The people could define literature however they wanted. It could be any kind of fiction, poetry or play. It could include works like love stories, mysteries or science fiction. The researchers compared the results with findings from nineteen-eighty-two and nineteen-ninety-two.

Women read more literature than men. But the research shows that men and women are both reading less and less.

Twenty years ago, people between the ages of eighteen and forty-four read more literature than any other age groups. But the new study shows an increasingly sharp loss of interest in reading among young adults. Researchers say the only people who read less literature in two-thousand-two were those age sixty-five and older.

VOICE ONE:

 

Dana Gioia

The poet Dana Gioia is chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Mister Gioia says all groups in America are reading less, and not just less literature. In nineteen-ninety-two, sixty-one percent of adults read a book. In two-thousand-two, it was fifty-seven percent. The average number of books read was eighteen. But some people read a lot more than others.

Among readers of literature, almost half read novels or short stories in two-thousand-two. Twelve percent read poetry. Four percent read a play.

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VOICE TWO:

"Reading at Risk" notes that the book industry in the United States now sells three times as many books as it did twenty-five years ago. In two-thousand the industry sold more than two thousand million books. Book sales are up. But the report shows that people are reading less for pleasure. And it says one reason is competition from technology.

The report lists how Americans divide their spending on things like entertainment. In nineteen-ninety, they spent six percent on audio and video recordings and on computers and software. They spent almost as much, five-point-seven percent, on books.

By two-thousand-two, five-point-six percent went to book buying. Twenty-four percent went to electronics.

But some people do use technology to listen to recordings of books or read electronic versions.

VOICE ONE:

In the words of Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts: "This report documents a national crisis."

Yet there are some who say Americans should not read too much into the importance of the warnings. Charles McGrath is former editor of the Book Review at The New York Times. The newspaper published a commentary in which Mister McGrath noted that the study dealt only with literature.

He said he regrets that the research did not include works of non-fiction. After all, he says, some books about facts and events are very important for the information they provide. For example, he says recent books about the war in Iraq are shaping national debate.

Also, Mister McGrath noted that the report did not consider magazines, newspapers or the Internet. And this literary critic criticized the fact that the people in the study could define literature any way they wished. They were told they did not have to include "just what literary critics might consider literature."

VOICE TWO:

While Americans are reading less literature, more are trying to write it. "Reading at Risk" says creative writing is one of the few literary activities that have increased.

And editors like David Green are trying to help people get their work printed. For many years, he has published a small magazine of short stories called Green's Magazine. Mister Green says it is costly to produce and mail four times a year. A few thousand Americans and Canadians buy it. But he says one reason he started the publication was to help beginning writers. He says it has always been difficult for new writers to find a publisher.

Today, though, writers who cannot get their work published by a traditional publishing company can place their work on the Internet. That way, people can read it online or print out a copy.

Some people who publish on the Internet are far from unknown. The writer Stephen King published "Riding the Bullet" online. It cost only