Sharpe's Opinion

Bailing out America’s Subprime Reading Market

Julian Gough in the New York Times:

As we all know, lax writing practices earlier this decade led to irresponsible writing and irresponsible reading. This simply put too many families into books they could not finish. We are seeing the impact on readers and neighborhoods, with five million Americans now behind on their reading. Some are just walking away from novels they should never have been reading in the first place. What began as a subprime reading problem has spread to other, less-risky readers and contributed to excess inventories.

…

To restore confidence in our book markets and our literary institutions, we must address the underlying problem —loss of confidence in our nation’s writers. That collapse in confidence is choking the flow of ideas that is so vitally important to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, ideas flow to novelists and poets who create novels and poems, ensuring an uninterrupted flow of literature to households and businesses. But stresses in our leading writers have led to the current severe and systemic writer’s block that threatens to undermine access to books for working Americans.

Marvellous.

Via Kottke