Chewing the bookfat

Yes. Well, I worked for this man in the late 90s. I love and respect Logan Fox because he encouraged me to go beyond what I could see directly in front of me. I finished my B.A. in Literature and did a second in Creative Writing. I finished my M.A. in English and Creative Writing (a hybrid) at Temple University--all the while telling stories of my times at Micawber. I am heartbroken (and I don't care that your readers find it corny) and, in fact, devistated at the announcement of Micawber's demise. I met the chilly and odd Joyce Carol Oates there. I schmoozed with the likes of Dick Ford and Seamus fucking Heaney. I drank awful wine with Russell Banks. All the while, Logan looked on and reminded me that I was destined for greater things--even if he didn't believe it. He'd seen smarter and more accomplished in his time--I can assure you. I can't even find the words to describe my feelings regarding this latest horrific news. Is that where it ends? Survivor? Big Brother? Fast fixes? Bandaids? Good Sweet Jesus. Funny, Logan used to laugh at my intensity and weird-ass mindless loyalty. As I make my way through my pathetic days of Adjunct Professoring, teaching all of you how to diagram sentences and write cohesive paragraphs and understand Shakespeare a tad more than you do, I feel like one of Hal's "Englishmen now abed" who hold their manhood's cheap while speaks a man of Logan's unimpeachable character and his impeccable taste in literature. I would take a bullet for Logan Fox. No joke. Laugh and jibe as you will.
You have no idea.
All Best,
Rob Schmitt

It's a chief reason people join bookclubs or attend literary series in the first place: They don't have enough ordinary literary discussion in their lives, so they have to organize some. I think you are right about why people join bookclubs. For non-readers, the idea of a planned 'water cooler' discussion is a strange one. Yet I know many people who are involved in book discussion groups, eager to discuss ideas brought about by the solitary activity of reading. Regarding Zinn's comment above: I would encourage him to visit MetaxuCafe and peruse any of the literary blogs linked there. Zinn will find an abundance of people who "talk" enthusiastically about books -- written by readers with lively discussions in the comments sections. Or check out an on-line group discussion, such as A Curious Singularity, focusing on discussion of a different short story each month, or slavesofgolconda which focuses on novels. In the interest of full discloser, I do participate irregularly in these discussion groups, but my point is not promote, but merely to suggest that there are on-line groups dedicated to literary discussion, not the promotion of someone's latest published work.

I've commuted on mass transit in Chicago for many years, with a two-year interruption a couple of years ago. Book reading has always been a steady observation of train-riders, indeed I've heard people discuss what their "current train book" is. People listening to music has always been a steady feature also (previously Walkmen now Ipods). The general losers of commuter market share in my long-term observation are magazines and newspapers.

The idea that Americans today have less leisure time than a generation or two ago is widely-held but completely wrong -- literally all data beyond anecdote points the other way. And actually indirect/anecdotal observation does also if you stop and think about how vastly larger our leisure-time-filling business sectors are today per capita.

Reading the trendy book "The Long Tail" is worthwhile because the pattern is actually not hype or theory but empirical fact, and spreading to every medium in which the technology allows it in quite-specific ways. (The theory predicts reality both backwards and forwards.) Arguably the historical moment in which a few broadcast mediums enforced true "water-cooler" universal cultural experiences was an atypical one that was artificially imposed by technology and ran contrary to what most people have always preferred.

There's no doubt that people don't read as much as they should anymore and that's certainly unfortunate but what struck me about the attitude of Logan Fox in this article--and it's an attitude that I've seen reflected many times by indy bookstore owners who have been forced to close their shops in recent years--is the sense that he's looking down his nose at the public.

Rather than lamenting the fact that people don't read, and that books don't hold the place in society that they should anymore, people in the book community (booksellers, publishers, etc.) should try to find ways to make books more interesting to people.

I'm not saying that it's an easy task but the book world really needs to stop crying in its beer and start trying to take some proactive action to revitalize the reading community.

On the other hand, when I worked at The Dallas Morning News, I used to take the DART train to work regularly. And I saw lots of people reading -- everyday. A pleasant and encouraging prospect. Naturally, the majority were reading Quick, the tabloid, mass-transit freebie the News developed and for which the News should pay a surcharge for massively contributing to the litter on DART buses and trains.

But each day there were always 2-3 people in my car who were reading SOMETHING book-like. I tell reading groups that they may recognize me in public because I'm the guy who's staring at them but has his head tilted sideways in order to read the title on their bookspine. I'm often disappointed in their choices, but several times a week I'd find someone with a classic, even if it was just a Narnia volume or what clearly must have been a school assignment, Frankenstein or Great Expectations.

Still, guess what? More people, on average, were reading something in print than were on cell phones, text messaging, playing GameBoys or thumbing their PDAs.

But not nearly as many as those listening to iPods.

Outside of my book world friends and my immediate family, I don't know hardly anyone who reads. The thing that always surprises me -- despite my cynicism, it still surprises me -- is that people aren't the least bit embarassed, or even reluctant to admit, that they haven't read a book since they graduated from college.

Michael,
Excellent point about leisure time, but do you really think Logan Fox's nostalgia is false?

I'll accept that in an earlier era people talked about "Burns and Allen" more than Hemingway, but the difference is that Hemingway wasn't dropped by his publishing house in favor of a Gracie Allen as-told-to. Faulkner didn't need a cooking show on the Food Network to get a book contract.

Today, it's not just the bookstore employees who are saturated by television -- it's the books themselves: Nicole Richie's The Truth About Diamonds, the multi-volume memoirs of Janice Dickenson, novelizations of The O.C. episodes, etc., etc.

I really can relate to this post. I wish more places i.e. online sites and groups would discuss literature more. Online, it seems like all the groups are writers shoving their books in your face.

That's a very shrewd point I hadn't considered -- how increasing work/career pressures on the middle class have affected its reading habits. I wonder if anyone has studied this and whether any changes in publishing (either what sells or how it's distributed and marketed) are directly tied to it. Considering how slowly and haphazardly the book industry responds to many social changes, these effects may be very "underground" yet broad-based, so much so that we're not noticing them.

My wife Sara, who teaches in a public elementary school, experiences first-hand how hard working-class parents must struggle to find time to meet with teachers and be involved with their kids' schooling. And the 60-hour work week -- plus longer commute times -- has undoubtedly filtered upwards into the middle class, All of this made me infuriated at a typical Rod Dreher column this past year in the Dallas Morning News which chastised parents for not getting involved more with their children's education. Mr. Dreher's wife home-schools their kids (a fact unmentioned in the column, but he did make sure to emphasize that he personally knows public school teachers as friends and understands their travails). With no universal health care and no system of day care in this country, one wonders how a trucker, who can be gone for weeks at a time, or ordinary folks who must work two shifts, are going to obey Mr. Dreher's moral imperative.

I agree that Logan Fox, for the most part, is engaging in false nostalgia. In an earlier era, he would have been complaining that people were more likely to talk about the "Burns and Allen" radio show than the latest work by Hemingway.

There is one legitimate threat in today's literary conversation, however: the death of the 40-hour work week and the erosion of leisure time.

The working class has always had a daunting task finding the time and energy to read a good book. That loss of down time has now consumed the middle class, who make up the bulk of the reading public, as well.

I wonder: how much has outsourcing, downsizing and the decline of he middle class shaped the economics of the book industry and its growing "blockbuster" mentality?