Questions, Questions, This Time abt. Eng. Lit. Dying

"Reading" in this context usually means "the reading of novels by adults," or, in some cases, by students, K-16.

Reading in this sense, particularly in the last 25 years, has been simultaneously dumbed down, hollowed out, fetishized and promoted. What is read has been greatly determined by corporate mergers from the mid-'60s on, which has left us with the Big Five... Four... Three... publishers, tasked with making e-media levels of profit. This has narrowed the range of work widely available.

What's left of the adult reading population has also been fragmented beyond belief by identity politics and age cohort. The drive for inclusion quickly became a means to cultural clout and whatever cash rewards were left in teaching and commentary* – and this has led to ever diminishing circles of content and whatever style was lying around.

(Identity politics/political correctness has more than half killed the endeavour. Saw a rack of featured books at my local library branch & turned to examine them for something interesting to take home. It was XX ethnic group month. My blood turned to a taste of metal and my skin felt burnt from within, exhausted exhaustion.

Why can't anything just be a good book? Why does it have to be a good [ethnicity here] book? Why do I have to read a fucking sermon?

Why does someone's book have to be a sermon, or presented as a sermon?**

This approach is self-destroyingly narrow, even as it claims to be widening the reader's experience. As though anything widely distributed & sold for profit is going to seriously challenge manufactured consent! I turned away in another tired & beaten fury. So much for "always had her nose in a book".)

Teaching literature is in an abysmal state. All sorts of mad non-systems replaced phonic in schools & kids were left permanently unable to decode the words on the page with any certainty and fluency.*** People turn away from that kind of experience, and "don't read."

There are all sorts of specialized sub-bits of reading people do do: nonfiction of general and specialized nature, schematics for car repair, science journals, etc., etc.

But "reading" in the sense it is usually meant is a product of the Prussian-inspired move to mass education and literacy from the C19th onwards: it was necessary for the workforce in a technological age.

The pic of Shakespeare as the personification and symbol of English Literature tells you what is really going on. He wrote plays. People watched them & heard them. They attended or performed "English Literature" such as miracle and morality plays. Now "English Literature" is on the BBC & HBO & Netflicks & Canal+ & ...

Literacy of the sort that is in decline has never been necessary to a population of peasants, serfs, tradies... Universal literacy no longer serves the State, and the State is retreating from its former functions in the mass of ordinary lives.

Which leaves ordinary people where they have always been: creating oral traditions.

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For Extra Credit:

1) Which do you think would be more frightening to the status quo?

a) a book written by a member of an under-represented community set aside and identified as a good [ethnicity here] book
b) a book written by a member of an under-represented community displayed, without ethnic designation, as a good book like any other good book

2) If you watched the video: At the beginning of the 19th century, why would a nation with a nascent empire suddenly start studying the literature of empire?

a) policies, job descriptions and manuals
b) self justification in the face of a near-universal Christianity, which would advocate loving your neighbour / rescuing the man who fell among thieves

Justify your answers on the sheet provided.

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*Attributed to Mark Twain: "You can make a fortune but you can't make a living." Truer now than it was then. The only reliable money in writing is teaching.

**If you want a sermon, go to church.

*** One of the great grifts perpetrated on the Dept. of Education in the ealier days of public-private business opportunities, begun under Bush the Younger's unfunded mandate, "No Child Left Behind."