Show R Reading a ing among adults on the rise in the US US- David 1 L. L Tri w I Los Angeles Times Tunes I jI I 3 I Is reading making a comeback in the Unit United 1 St States es That's hats the finding of Reading the on Rise a study released Monday 1 by the National Endowment f for forthe forthe the Arts which concludes that literary reading anion among I j adult Americans has gone gon up 35 percent J over the la last six SIX years The endowment considers consider this significant because it its last reading survey in 2002 reported such a precipitous drop in literary reading that it was titled Reading at Risk The 2002 stud study showed that in the year 10 period beginning in 1992 adult readers fell from 5 54 percent of the population to percent So does the ne new v report mean weve we've turned a cultural comer corner The answer depends on where you you stand in the cultural landscape Im I'm not so sure reading really was in crisis any more than it ever has been Laments over the death of reading are as old as mass literacy ever since we ve we began egan to consider culture asa as asa asa a social value weve we've fixated on the way it falls apart But what is it exactly were we're lamenting The NEA's terms are not particularly useful The key phrase in Reading on the Rise is literary reading which the endowment defines as novels and short stories pl plays ys or poems In 2008 for the first time the NEA included online reading habits in its survey as in previous years ears nonfiction was out of the loop In a recent essay m in inthe the Nation William Deresiewicz z argued that the NEA has played into the tendency of so-called so literary mandarins the critics and scholars to see themselves as the Last of the Readers a beleaguered cultural elite His response to the 2002 surveys survey's finding that only 96 milli million n American adults engaged in m 1 IJ h six six million American adults adult engage in literary reading In other words theres there's theresa therea a whole lotta read reading in going on I agree with wit Deresiewicz 96 million ii iia is isa isa a lot of readers a veritable army of the written word And yet Im I'm glad that tha reading also seems to be or orthe on the he upswing if f indeed i it is IS In 2008 percent of American adults read literature but in 1982 the figure was was percent Even the most impressive readership gains in the study among 18 to 24 year-olds year are open to interpretation Yes the percent of young adults represents a 89 percent increase from iTom 2002 but its it's still significantly lower than the 1982 surveys survey's percent Not surprisingly reading rates ates go up according to level of f education percent of college graduates identify as Ls readers compared with percent of high school graduates and percent of If those who never went to o high school Consider ethnicity percent of f whites percent of blacks lacks and percent of Hispanics meet the NEA's literary reader criteria and nd you get a fuller picture suggesting that in hi the US U.S. reading is a talisman o. o of class This is important because Reading on the Rise correlates its findings to a broader context framing reading in terms of moral value Reading is an important indicator of of various positive individual and nd social behavior patterns the report informs us adding that previous NEA research has shown that literary readers attend arts and sports events play sports do outdoor activities exercise and volunteer at higher rates than nonreaders Setting aside the question of whether reading is or even should be good for you check out Alan Bennetts Bennett's short novel The Uncommon Reader for fora a deft take on the other other- side of that debate books as socially disruptive these sorts of comparisons suggest a disturbing subtext in which a certain kind of reader makes a better grade of citizen literary eugenics in other words But don t expect Reading on the Rise to address that its it's too interested in hi celebrating itself I can think of no happier way to end my tenure at the National Endowment for the Arts writes NEA Chairman Dana Gioia in his introduction to the study than by sharing such felicitous data data data he suggests that have more than a little to do with such NEA programs as the Big Read which cheerleads for the reading of a particular book each year through city schools libraries and book gro groups ps That may mayor or may not be true the study didn't measure it but either way it seems more self self- congratulatory than persuasive not unlike Reading on the Rise itself i |