And now for something
completely different.... though I'm sure I'll work birds
into it somehow...
I was listening to NPR yesterday,
as is often the case, being a liberal intellectual or
whatever the majority calls people who listen to NPR, and
heard Dana
Gioia of the National
Endowment for the Arts being interviewed about
the
Reading at Risk study that
just came out , day before yesterday. The summary:
A new report
by the National Endowment for the Arts finds the
number of literate, non-reading adults dropped
sharply between 1992 and 2002. This despite the
best efforts of Harry Potter and Oprah Winfrey's
book club.
Leaving out the interesting notion
that a fictional character, in a children's book series,
is making an active effort to get adults to read more,
the study proved stranger than I thought.
Chairman Gioia defined literary
reading as "novels, short stories, plays and poetry read
in book form outside work or school. " Read that again,
readers. Notice anything missing? Anything mildly
strange? What about non-fiction? What about magazines and
newspapers? The NPR interviewer even asked "what about
non-fiction?" and Gioia stated that the definition they
used in the study excluded non-fiction but included the
broadest possible definition of "literary reading". For
example, he claimed that even if people read 10 pages of
a Harlequin romance or a mystery novel, that counted as
literature. Really. Listen
for yourself. So let me get
this straight... reading 10 pages of a bodice ripper is
going to make me more likely to do volunteer work, attend
arts events, and participate in civic life than reading
Walden? Think of it. The chairman of the NEA
excludes from the definition of literature such writers
as Emerson, Thoreau, Jonathan Edwards, John Muir ,or for
that matter Studs Terkel. Worse yet, what about Plato,
Aristotle , and Socrates or even
Berkeley's useless rant on tar
water? Biographies,
philosophy, literary criticism, essays, nature writing
... all missing from the NEA's definition of literature.
Anybody else out there think Walden has had more
influence on civic-mindedness than all the Harry Potter
novels combined? Not that I have anything against Harry
Potter. More power to J.K. Rowling for revitalizing
children's reading habits.
OK, as a poet, I clearly have to
believe that poetry matters. My
quixotic participation in
Poets
Against the War's
pre-invasion-of-Iraq "national day of poets against the
war" shows that at least a year ago February I believed
poetry could do something. I was wrong then. A picture is
worth ten thousand words. No matter how many times I get
people to listen to me read Du Fu's Ballad of the Army
Carts it takes bloody ghastly pictures to wake people
up to what war means. Does that mean poetry doesn't
matter? No. It just means that there's more to informing
people's opinions than poetry and fiction. I would
certainly hope that people participating in civic life
are reading the newspaper, the objective parts and the
opinion parts, when they're making up their minds which
side they're on in any given debate. I sure intend on
reading the newspaper between now and election day.
Magazines too maybe. Speaking of magazines, Louis Menand
had a great book review in The New Yorker about
Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Turns out
I'm
not the only one confused
by her inconsistent application of her own rules on
commas and their orthogonal relationship to the
Chicago Manual of Style. But I digress. Back to
"does poetry matter? " Chairman Gioa also seems to have
forgotten that poetry is a spoken art. Poetry is
meant to be sung, recited, slammed, presented orally...
not strictly to gather dust on the page. Break out your
tapes of Allen Ginsberg reading Howl or listen to
some of your Scottish ballad recordings or go to a poetry
slam... you get the idea.
Briefly on to plays. Shakespeare on
the page didn't grab me in 8th grade. In 9th grade I saw
Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet on stage
and became Shakespeare-mad for most of my adolescence. I
can't spell today and the spellchecker dictionary is
corrupted so bear with my errors OK? Anyway, Shakespeare
on stage is worth ten thousand Shakespeares on the page.
And when Nancy and I read Noh and joruri
plays we act them out. OK so we're reading them from
the page, but my point is they are meant to be spoken
too. And the puppets' gestures and special effects are
part of the play. They're meant to be visual and visible
in three dimensions. Of course you're also supposed to be
eating salted eels while you watch, so we can't really do
authentic joruri in my living room but you get the
idea. There are some words on paper that are meant to
live off the page: poetry and plays.
That leaves novels. Arguably,
novels are intended for the page. I buy that. And clearly
novels influence the way I think. Why else would I reread
Moby Dick every year and make the rainy, icy
pilgrimage to New Bedford on the anniversary of the day
Melville set sail on the Acushnet? Speaking of which,
another weirdness I encountered on NPR a few weeks ago
(on Bloomsday) was Dick Gordon stating that "Nobody
commemorates the day Ishmael set sail on the Pequot."
Tell my, mister Gordon, where does it say what date the
Pequot set sail? We know when the Acushnet sailed and
that's the day we commemorate. And the more I read
Moby Dick, the more convinced I am that Ishmael
and Melville have a lot in common. Besides that, about
half the readers of Moby Dick think it's about
Ahab anyway. The thing of it is, Mr. Chairman Gioia, how
can you fully appreciate Moby Dick if you've never
read the Puritans whom Melville refutes (or at least
talks back to), huh? And isn't it fascinating to compare
and contrast Melville's thoughts with Emerson and
Thoreau's essays to understand a bit more about how
American literature evolved?
Chairman Gioia, how dare you leave
Walden out of the categor of literary reading when
it is probably next to Moby Dick and Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God the founding work of what
is truly American in American literature?
OK, all three readers remaining out
there, send your battered copies of Walden to the
NEA immediately. Then buy new copies and distribute them
to everyone you know in the 18 to 34 year old
demographic.
Then we get to the inevitable
blaming of the Internet for the decline in the reading of
so-called literature. Yet, when I look at the NEA's
charts, it looks astoundingly like the real culprit is
people working out (55 percent) and gardening (47
percent). Ain't nobody claiming we have a national crisis
because too many people are working out and gardening is
there? Aren't we having a national crisis because not
enough people work out? Whether you believe that 55% of
Americans work out or not it's pretty interesting that
both those activities rank higher than reading. On the
other hand, reading ranks higher than going to sporting
events and yet people who read are more likely to go to
sporting events but, again, sports writing doesn't count
as literature. Give me a break, Mr. Gioia.
Bart
Giamatti is rolling over in
his grave, God rest his baseball-loving soul. One thing
we know for sure, Dana Gioia will never be commissioner
of baseball, but wouldn't it be great if Donald Hall were
commissioner of baseball? Not every poet (that's Gioa's
claim to fame) is as narrow minded and elitist as to
dismiss some of America's best writing as not "literary".
Let's start a grass roots movement to impeach both Dana
Gioia and Bud Selig and replace them both with Donald
Hall. Yeah, that's the ticket. Poets united to take back
both non-fiction and baseball for the people. Alert the
press.
I will take my tongue out of my
cheek now and try to avoid biting it.
