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September 5th, 2010 / 11:49 am rk—

anyone who regularly uses public transportation knows these numbers are probably optimistic.

September 5th, 2010 / 12:12 pm Salvatore Pane—

I’m really glad a literary writer like Franzen is getting so much mainstream attention. However, this line really disturbed me:

“David Foster Wallace may have cashed in his chips, but Franzen isn’t just hanging in…”

September 5th, 2010 / 12:27 pm Lincoln—

This is actually better than I thought. I felt like I read the average person only read one.

September 5th, 2010 / 12:39 pm Dreezer—

The Esquire article is just part of the hype machine, which is not to say that Freedom is bad. I’m about a third of the way through and am enjoying it immensely. It’s what typically is referred to as a page-turner. The prose style is almost transparently clear, the voice of the Patty character in the autobiographical sections is engaging, even when she’s at her most wrongheaded, and he’s writing about characters who are very close in age to myself, so I identify with many of the cultural and historical references (’70s punk rock and the development of alt rock are important).
It’s no more difficult to read than, for example, a Jodi Picoult novel — it’s just a lot longer. (Also, the type font is not that small and the leading not that tight — 36 lines to the page, which is pretty normal. Infinite Jest ran about 43 lines to the page.)

September 5th, 2010 / 12:41 pm John Minichillo—

Most people don’t want to read a book that makes them feel stupid. They want what’s familiar, what everyone else is reading. For years, they were saying the average American read one book per year. So to get a blockbuster, which is what the media companies who own the presses want, the book has to be nonthreatening, safe, easy.

We all know this, but can you imagine McDonalds marketing to people who only ate one burger per year: you’ll hardly even notice the taste of cow flesh!

The presses want literary writers and critical recognition, they want that reminiscent whiff of their former existences, but it can only exist under the wing of what sells, what appeals to the mass readership ( who are inexperienced nonserious novice readers)

September 5th, 2010 / 1:25 pm Amber—

I had the same thought. Like, oh, four, really? Wow! That’s way more than none.

September 5th, 2010 / 1:58 pm Dreezer—

deadgod–Exactly.

September 5th, 2010 / 3:49 pm rk—

anyone who regularly uses public transportation knows these numbers are probably optimistic.

September 5th, 2010 / 4:12 pm Salvatore Pane—

I’m really glad a literary writer like Franzen is getting so much mainstream attention. However, this line really disturbed me:

“David Foster Wallace may have cashed in his chips, but Franzen isn’t just hanging in…”

September 5th, 2010 / 4:27 pm Lincoln—

This is actually better than I thought. I felt like I read the average person only read one.

September 5th, 2010 / 4:39 pm Dreezer—

The Esquire article is just part of the hype machine, which is not to say that Freedom is bad. I’m about a third of the way through and am enjoying it immensely. It’s what typically is referred to as a page-turner. The prose style is almost transparently clear, the voice of the Patty character in the autobiographical sections is engaging, even when she’s at her most wrongheaded, and he’s writing about characters who are very close in age to myself, so I identify with many of the cultural and historical references (’70s punk rock and the development of alt rock are important).
It’s no more difficult to read than, for example, a Jodi Picoult novel — it’s just a lot longer. (Also, the type font is not that small and the leading not that tight — 36 lines to the page, which is pretty normal. Infinite Jest ran about 43 lines to the page.)

September 5th, 2010 / 4:41 pm John Minichillo—

Most people don’t want to read a book that makes them feel stupid. They want what’s familiar, what everyone else is reading. For years, they were saying the average American read one book per year. So to get a blockbuster, which is what the media companies who own the presses want, the book has to be nonthreatening, safe, easy.

We all know this, but can you imagine McDonalds marketing to people who only ate one burger per year: you’ll hardly even notice the taste of cow flesh!

The presses want literary writers and critical recognition, they want that reminiscent whiff of their former existences, but it can only exist under the wing of what sells, what appeals to the mass readership ( who are inexperienced nonserious novice readers)

September 5th, 2010 / 5:14 pm Owen Kaelin—

So… how many Americans visit a museum or gallery in one year, and of these: how many museums/galleries do they visit per year? Does a low number mean we stop painting or sculpting? And… among all the people who never visit a museum or gallery (unless they have kids, ahem)… how many of them are aware of Salvador Dalí?

I agree with John: Instead of worrying about properly gauging an audience and then how to address that audience… the trick is to get people to read your work. Period. The statistics are irrelevant.

But as for people not wanting to read books that make them feel dumb… if you’re willing to say that, wouldn’t you be just as willing to say that people buy books that make them feel smart? How many people have Infinite Jest, Ulysses, or A Brief History of Time sitting on their shelf and yet have read all of 3 pages?

How many people have you seen on the bus or subway reading Infinite Jest? I’ve seen a few.

September 5th, 2010 / 5:33 pm deadgod—

[H]e’s doubling down. And so Freedom kicks against the pricks like a thing intent on being. [. . .] It’s making a claim for shelf space among the kind of books that the big dogs used to write. The kind they called important. The kind they called greats.

The panting schlock of this blurboma is symptomatic of the anti-literacy its author pretends to discern.

September 5th, 2010 / 5:59 pm Janey Smith—

It’s not the number of books people read a year that makes me curious. It’s what they are reading. You can stay with one book for an entire year and learn a lot. I just read Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems for the 736th time this year. And now I know who Lana Turner is.

September 5th, 2010 / 6:24 pm Kyle Minor—

I just re-read The Fortress of Solitude. It most reminded me of the childhood passages from Philip Roth novels (American Pastoral, The Plot Against America, etc.)

One thing that interests me about Jonathan Lethem is how many different voices he inhabits, novel to novel, and sometimes within a novel.

I don’t like any of his other books as well as I like The Fortress of Solitude or Motherless Brooklyn, but I think he’s a consistently interesting writer, and I think if he hadn’t become a hugely successful writer he might be a writer people in the literary “underground” talk about all the time, the way people used to do before his first big success (I’m old enough to remember.)

September 5th, 2010 / 6:35 pm Lincoln—

It certainly raises the question of what average means here. Is four books the mean, median or mode? If it is the mean, then the heavy readers are probably skewing it up to four and most people who do read only read one or two.

September 5th, 2010 / 7:21 pm brittany wallace—

rock n roll

September 5th, 2010 / 9:01 pm Mike Meginnis—

I am super into Lethem (though not so much Motherless Brooklyn). Have you read Gun with Occasional Music? It is so good.

September 5th, 2010 / 9:11 pm JD HARDING—

High rates of adult illiteracy could be to blame.

September 5th, 2010 / 9:29 pm Kyle Minor—

I did like it. I like Girl in Landscape, too, and Amnesia Moon, and the essay book.

September 5th, 2010 / 9:51 pm zusya—

rolling rock

September 5th, 2010 / 10:15 pm reynard—

joe brainard always talking bout lana turner too, she’s like a goddess for those guys. this is my favorite thing in her wikipedia page:

The Stompanato killing

Turner met Johnny Stompanato during the spring of 1957, shortly after ending her marriage to Barker. At first, Turner was susceptible to Stompanato’s good looks and prowess as a lover, but after she discovered his ties to the Los Angeles underworld (in particular, his association with gangster Mickey Cohen), she tried to break off the affair out of fear of bad publicity. Stompanato was not easily deterred, however, and over the course of the following year, they carried on a relationship filled with violent arguments, physical abuse and repeated reconciliations.

In the fall of 1957, Stompanato followed Turner to England where she was filming Another Time, Another Place (1958) costarring Sean Connery. Fearful that Turner was having an affair with Connery, Stompanato stormed onto the set brandishing a gun. Connery managed to land a single punch to Stompanato’s jaw and took away his gun. Stompanato was soon deported by Scotland Yard for the incident.

On the evening of April 4, 1958, Turner and Stompanato began a violent argument in Turner’s house at 730 N. Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills. Fearing her mother’s life was in danger, Turner’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Cheryl [Crane], grabbed a kitchen knife and ran to Turner’s defense.

Many theories abound as to what happened afterward, but it appears [Cheryl] Crane stabbed Stompanato, killing him. The case quickly became a media sensation. It was later deemed a justifiable homicide at a coroner’s inquest, at which Turner provided dramatic testimony. Some observers have said her testimony that day was the acting performance of her life.

September 5th, 2010 / 10:25 pm Richard—

okay but does anybody study the people that do read? i must read 40-50 novels a year – hell my mom reads a lot of thrillers and low grade stuff, and she must read 40 books a year, my brother the same, nothing literary, easily 30-40 books a year – mysteries, detective books, etc.

don’t people like us (writers and readers) and those that read a lot of commercial fiction count someplace in those numbers? if stephen king and jk rowling and grisham and Stieg Larsson are selling millions of copies a year they have to go someplace, right?

September 5th, 2010 / 10:35 pm Lincoln—

It certainly raises the question of what average means here. Is four books the mean, median or mode? If it is the mean, then the heavy readers are probably skewing it up to four and most people who do read only read one or two.

September 6th, 2010 / 12:17 am Igor—

it makes me boil to think of someone taking credit for my hard work.

September 6th, 2010 / 1:10 am Amber—

That’s more like what I would suspect, from my highly unscientific research and observations. I’d guess most people read maybe one book a year, probably Stig Larsson or Harry Potter or whatever the it book is, and that’s about it. That would describe many of my friends and family members–who are almost all highly educated. My husband’s dad, also very educated, hasn’t read a book in forty years, or so he claims. I believe it.

September 6th, 2010 / 1:29 am Kyle Minor—

I did like it. I like Girl in Landscape, too, and Amnesia Moon, and the essay book.

September 6th, 2010 / 2:28 am John Minichillo—

And people aren’t really stupid or illiterate. There are just a lot of people who don’t really get the contract you enter into as a reader of fiction. My dad is still traumatized because someone made him read TS Eliot in college fifty years ago. You can graduate from college in 2010 without ever encountering contemporary lit.

The people who read one book a year have never heard of Ulysses or DFW. They are reading Marley and Me or Shit My Dad Says.

It doesn’t make people bad or ignorant, though it’s certainly a kind if ignorance. It’s a kind of illiteracy. The anti-intellectual bias in the wider culture is a chilly glacier, immovable and massive. It allows for a kind of righteousness and sureness in not knowing. Not everyone is smug about the things they don’t know, but plenty of folk are.

September 6th, 2010 / 2:23 pm Joseph Young—

i would actually think that more people go to museums than read 4 books, but that view is likely skewed by where i live–baltimore, where the art museums are free, and 35 miles from washington dc where they are even freer. go out on a sunday afternoon to an exhibit of a dead french painter and it’s mobbed with families that you wouldn’t call particularly privledged or arty or whatever. seems kind of like a thing a lot of middle class famillies do, go to the dead french guy exhibit a couple times a year.

September 6th, 2010 / 6:44 pm Khakjaan Wessington—

Just means more power to the literate. Ha ha.

September 6th, 2010 / 9:52 pm Owen Kaelin—

Ultimately, educating people about art (which includes writing etc.) comes down to the artists themselves. It’s up to us to begin the process. The educators will follow when they see that they must, when they see the cultural transformation. But the transformation MUST begin with us, because it can begin nowhere else.

There’s no time to waste. While we’re all moaning about statistics, the educators are still teaching Steinbeck and O’Henry and Thomas Hardy, who bore the students to tears; and Homer and Shakespeare, whom High School students are not ready for . . . while they completely ignore important writers like Brautigan and Barthelme, and Ionesco and Arrabel, whose writings might actually excite students.

Isn’t it up to US to bring the works of Evenson, Lutz and Marcus to the forefront? As well as the above-mentioned? As well as, of course, our own writings?

September 6th, 2010 / 10:10 pm Owen Kaelin—

Just what aren’t rednecks getting? How many do you know?

People who see art as material for the elite — I hope you’ll excuse me for being crude — have their heads up their asses. I’m not saying that “art is for the masses”, because this simply isn’t true. Artists generally create art for themselves and other artists. But… this does not mean that only people of a certain sort of education are capable of appreciating art. If it’s a tough-written book, perhaps. But if it’s a painting . . . well, take Dalí. Anyone can look at a painting by Dalí and then walk away from it with a certain sensation in their gut and certain thoughts in their head. This is what art does to people, it’s what it’s INTENDED to do to people. Those who have studied visual art, among other things, will read more from it — and absorb more — than your average person, but that doesn’t make the work unreadable by a ‘lesser educated’ viewer. All it means is that the ‘lesser educated’ viewer will take something different from it, the work will reveal itself in a different manner inside of them.

Why has impressionism become so popular?

September 6th, 2010 / 10:44 pm Khakjaan Wessington—

Just means more power to the literate. Ha ha.

September 6th, 2010 / 11:22 pm Hank—

I don’t think it is true that high school students aren’t ready for Homer and Shakespeare. That’s just more a product of how lousy the public school system is.

Of course, after reading Homer and Shakespeare in high school, a person would probably be due for a re-read in a few years, but what, of any quality, wouldn’t be due for a re-read if you read it first in high school?

September 7th, 2010 / 12:43 am Owen Kaelin—

Well, I’ll speak for myself: When I was introduced to Shakespeare and Homer, in Jr. High, I thought I was ready for it. If I might be forgiven in forsaking modesty to make a point: I was at least a little smarter than most of the people in my school (even though my grades were horrible). For example: I had the hardest time explaining to people why Time did not and could not exist and therefore couldn’t be traveled or changed etc. etc. I never managed to get my point through to a single person. That was me in Jr. High. Just saying.

I was also a writer and a painter. But while I tried to fool myself that I was ready for Homer and Shakespeare . . . I really wasn’t. I read the stuff and it meant little to me. I was more appreciative of MacBeth in High School, but still . . . it wasn’t until college that I really was ready to delve into the material and really appreciate it. So… when I compare those personal experiences to those of others in my classes, many of whom loudly complained . . . no. I don’t think very many of us — if any — were really ‘ready’. Therefore I can only see it as a waste of time to have had us read Shakespeare’s plays in their entirety — not to mention Homer’s The Odyssey.

Perhaps you were different; I don’t know. But if you were: then you were certainly not exemplary of the broad populace of American 10th graders . . . especially, I imagine, growing up in a town of ‘rednecks’.

I DO think that this sort of material is important to touch upon, and I think it’s highly important to give High School students an overview, and some short examples — not to make them read the entirety of The Odyssey or Beowulf, but to make them AWARE. I hated Beowulf, and I doubt anyone in my class liked Beowulf. Nor Chaucer. Is it important to make students aware of Beowulf and Chaucer? Absolutely. But to make them read it in its entirety? Mind-numbing.

My 10th grade English teacher nearly killed me with his love for Thomas Hardy and Frank Norris and John Steinbeck.

And the real tragedy, I think, is that I had not even heard of ANY literature written within the 30 years prior, until I entered College.

I’ve said it before: I think High School teachers ought to be giving students a broad overview of literary approaches, a broad overview of writers who have made important impressions upon literature. This includes people like Barthelme, Brautigan, Ionesco, Calvino… as well as contemporary writers. I find it highly important to let students know that there’s a whole range of literature out there for them to burrow their eager eyes into, not just Steinbeck and Thomas Hardy and other stuff that bores most students to death.
The most important thing on the agenda of every teacher ought to be to make as many students as possible interested in SOME sort of literature that has not been written by either Stephen King or Michael Chrichton.

But… this is getting beside the main point that I was trying to make: that it’s up to US, not the teachers, to make the change. They will not change their curricula until we change the culture. Everything begins with us.

September 7th, 2010 / 1:12 am Hank—

Right, outsider art was one of those things that I had intended to address, but forgot about. I think it is a special case, because it (and my understanding could be incorrect) is treated as a sort of marginal thing — something made by persons who are “others” of sorts. Like the difference between “official” art and curios. But then, I don’t really know a lot about the art world — it is a hard thing to become acquainted with where I sit. I’d really love to, though. I spent three semesters in university at St. Louis and never found the time to visit the art museum there, despite the fact that I really wanted to.

“If somebody looks at a work by Dalí and is totally baffled and befuddled and disturbed . . . they cannot walk away from that painting unchanged in some manner, no matter how superficially.”

I’m not one hundred percent sold on that. In order to be truly baffled, befuddled, and disturbed, you have to give something a good look; and in order to give a good look, you have to care. If you’re in a museum or gallery already, it is probably because you want to LOOK. But if someone brought a roving exhibit out here, then I imagine it would be seen more as a curiosity than anything else. Whether art is art or not depends on context: I can’t put my signature on one of the urinals I clean on a daily basis and call it art. And likewise, without a preconception of art as art in the mind of the viewer, the viewer can’t understand art AS art, which means that in the context of the “uneducated” viewer, then art can’t BE art anymore. An autographed urinal in a particular space of a gallery is art; but “Nude Descending a Staircase” outside of a gallery or similar space is incomprehensible.

You are correct in saying that it is too far to say that “grow[ing] up in such an environment then [one] can’t appreciate art.” However, it make the cards stacked heavily against a person. I am probably talking past you a little, though: I think we have slightly differing conceptions of what art may be. For example, I don’t quite buy the idea of folk music (genuine folk music, that is) being art. Doc Watson, who I would consider to make ‘genuine’ folk music, does not make music that I would consider to be art: instead, it is simply the culmination of a tradition of passing down songs sang and played on the guitar, banjo, etc. Art, I think, takes a sort of conscious working-out that isn’t necessarily present in folk.

Also: bluegrass isn’t folk. American folk music is its progenitor and it borrows much from folk, but it is separate from folk music.

September 7th, 2010 / 1:43 am Owen Kaelin—

Hank: I didn’t realize one needed an education to ‘understand’ art.

September 7th, 2010 / 1:59 am Hank—

A formal education isn’t necessary, no, but an education is necessary nonetheless. And guess what? Rednecks just ain’t gettin’ it.

September 7th, 2010 / 2:24 am Owen Kaelin—

Yeah… perhaps there’s some value in that, but best, I think, that that sort of strategy be explored at home . . . because I just don’t think it’s an efficient use of valuable school time, is all.

Over time, it becomes harder and harder for people to learn things, because the human mind becomes increasingly less absorbent, increasingly stubborn, increasingly bolstered in its understanding of the world and solidified in its manners of dealing with it. (Although, if I understand correctly, I think that this change is much more chemical than psychological.) So… if students at a relatively young age are not quite ‘wise’ or ‘clear-headed’ enough to appropriately appreciate/analyze a difficult work of literature: it seems to me that this time should be used to introduce the students to as much of a variety of literature as possible — presented in the most palatable form possible — with the hope that they’ll catch on to SOMETHING and thus become active readers.

Thus: voila! We have lots more active readers and people aren’t wringing their hands so much about low readership statistics.

I say college instead of 12th grade, I think, mostly because students change their attitude when they enter college. College is a major moment of psychological change.

September 7th, 2010 / 3:22 am Hank—

I don’t think it is true that high school students aren’t ready for Homer and Shakespeare. That’s just more a product of how lousy the public school system is.

Of course, after reading Homer and Shakespeare in high school, a person would probably be due for a re-read in a few years, but what, of any quality, wouldn’t be due for a re-read if you read it first in high school?

September 7th, 2010 / 3:54 am Owen Kaelin—

I don’t imagine a Greek peasant or slave would’ve been hired to paint a wall in a politician’s home or to build a temple. …Not to mention given the opportunity to be taken on as somebody’s apprentice. Let’s leave the Greeks and Romans out of this.

As for “proletariat-artists”, or whatever you want to call them… hmm… “Outsider Art” comes to mind, and it’s still popular.

No, art is not for the elite. It’s for any and every audience that manages to connect with it. While education helps, it is not necessary. So long as a work of art does SOMETHING to somebody on a visceral and/or psychological level: it’s done it’s job.

If somebody looks at a work by Dalí and is totally baffled and befuddled and disturbed . . . they cannot walk away from that painting unchanged in some manner, no matter how superficially.

Yes, I’ve heard all about those in this nation who take pride in ignorance, who rely on their traditions to get by, I even sympathize with them, I even think I understand, to an extent, their resentful rejection of what urbanites such as myself see as signs of virtue — education and an open mind to culture. They might’ve been angry that Obama characterized them as ‘clinging to god and guns’, but my impression at the time was that Obama understood these people better than most people wanted to give him credit for. I don’t see anything bad about somebody ‘clinging’ to something that helps them through their lives, day after day, especially if they live in a shitty little village that offers little education and very little in work opportunities. The mine or steel plant is right over there. Good luck if it closes down.

But… to say that if you grow up in such an environment then you can’t appreciate art? I think that’s going a little bit too far. I’m sure you understand people in these towns far better than I do, but I don’t buy that they’re all immune to all art in any form . . . yes, particularly music.

Anyhow: I do agree that there’s great beauty in folk music. I love Appalachian folk, I love English & Irish folk. I love Scandinavian folk. It’s highly visceral and moving, and it’s true art, as true as a Jackson Pollack painting or a Georges Braque painting, or Ulysses. When it comes down to it: I’m hesitant to submit that a Braque painting is better art than a really beautiful Appalachian folk song.

(Admittedly I’m crossing genres here, but I don’t want to bring up classical music, simply because so little of it moves me. (Okay, Schubert a little, Vivaldi a little.) )

September 7th, 2010 / 4:43 am Owen Kaelin—