We all know the habit of reading for pleasure is dying. But a chilling article in the current issue of The New Yorker (”Twilight of the Books, www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain/) envisions the day when reading for pleasure may become merely “an increasingly arcane hobby.”

For many in America, I believe that day already has arrived. The question then becomes, Why does it matter? Why, when we have great choices available to us at little or no cost on TV, in the movies, on the Web and elsewhere, does it matter that we no longer rely on the printed word to stimulate our thoughts and imaginations?

For one thing, it matters because reading IS a unique, and uniquely stimulating, activity. Watching TV or a movie is principally passive, whereas reading is principally an activity of involvement. The action on the screen washes over you. But there is no “action” on the page; YOU must create the pictures, the sounds, the scents, the ambience. The author gives you the blocks; it’s up to you to build the building.

Right now I am in the middle of Bruce Wagner’s scarifying novel I’M LOSING YOU, Book I of his “Cellphone Trilogy.” It’s a great example of what I’m talking about. It is hands down the best thing ever written about Hollywood; but, even though it is about the movies, no movie could ever capture its subtleties. The novel is written in at least a dozen voices, through at least a dozen points of view, and every one of these narrators is unreliable. We the readers know more about them than they know about themselves, because of the skills of this uncommonly gifted author, who says so much but leaves so much more unsaid. Wagner is a screenwriter himself, but it doesn’t surprise me that he chose the novel form to tell this story.

I am also reading THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC by Daniel J. Levitin, a perfectly fascinating primer on neuroscience written with great panache by a guy who was in a rock band before he got his Ph.D. This book could indeed be made into a great series on PBS or the Discovery Channel, but you’d be watching a long long time before such a series could relay all the fascinating knowledge Levitin gracefully packs into 320 pages.

For another thing, failing to read for pleasure may be costing us some of our abilities to think. The New Yorker article makes this point in a variety of ways, among them the following. Quoting from a recent National Endowment for the Arts report, “To Read or Not to Read,” it says (striking terror into the hearts of parents everywhere): “Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.”

And here’s another cost we risk, which I ran across while researching my recent presentation on getting boys to read: Fiction coaxes us to place ourselves in the shoes of characters we won’t encounter in life, thereby building our capacities for empathy and understanding — which, whether you’re caring for an injured person or negotiating a business deal, can be real useful in real life.

There’s a lot of fascinating neuroscience in the New Yorker article too, and some equally fascinating cultural anthropology. It compares our thinking styles with those of preliterate “oral” cultures to show how reading molds our worldviews and shapes what we are pleased to call “intelligence.” In one study it cites, illiterate peasants were unable or unwilling to make logical inferences about hypothetical situations. “Asked by [the researcher’s] staff about polar bears, a peasant grew testy: ‘What the cock knows how to do, he does. What I know, I say, and nothing beyond that!’” It continues:

“[Another researcher] synthesized existing research into a vivid picture of the oral mind-set. Whereas literates can rotate concepts in their minds abstractly, orals embed their thoughts in stories. According to [the researcher], the best way to preserve ideas int he absence of writing is to ‘think memorable thoughts,’ whose zing insures their transmission. [Shades of writing a “grabber” novel opening!] In an oral culture, cliche and stereotype are valued, as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon, for putting those accumulations at risk. There’s no such concept as plagiarism, and redundancy is an asset that helps an audience follow a complex argument.”

Not only novels will go bye-bye, but newspapers too (gone already, eh?), with their ability to present argument and counter-argument and go beneath the surface in a way broadcast news cannot do. Indeed, the New Yorker author, Caleb Crain, seems to think all is lost. “No effort of will is likely to make reading popular again,” he wrings his hands. “Children may be browbeaten, but adults resist interference with their pleasures.”

Hey, I do this stuff too. I listen to recorded books in the car all the time. I’m listening to Tom Perrotta’s LITTLE CHILDREN right now, and it’s first rate in the way a fine novel ought to be — you savor the prose and fill in the blanks, much as you’d do if you were reading instead of auditing. Because of that need to fill in the blanks, it seems to me that listening to books is a lot more like reading them than watching movies is.

I know this is a pretty heavy topic for Christmas Eve so I’ll lighten up. Have wonderful holidays, everyone. There’ll be enough time in the New Year to be afraid, very afraid.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Remember about me being asked to be “Writer in Residence” at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Chicago? Make that two schools. Thurgood Marshall has talked me up to the nearby Albany Park Multicultural Academy. For two weeks in early spring, I’ll be teaching seventh and eighth graders how to write narrative. Apropos of the above topic, if I were to save a soul or two I’d be a happy guy.

P.P.S. Apropos of none of the above (except the movies), the boffo boxoffice hit of the moment is “I Am Legend.” If you want to see a truly awful movie — implausible from the first scene on, maudlin, badly acted, badly directed, muddled story, bad ending, zero out of a possible five stars, what in the world can I think of to say worse about it? — this is that movie. Bah humbug!

I’m not planning to vote for Mitt Romney. He’s smart, competent and has a great jawline, but he is a shameful flip-flopper, a man so eager to get elected that he is ready to abandon whatever principles he may have had.

My opposition has nothing to do with his religion though and, if you oppose Romney, I hope your opposition is not on religious grounds either.

In fact, I’d like to stick up for Romney’s religion, or anyway its secular aspects.

Romney is a Mormon. Mormonism – more properly known as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, or LDS – is a purebred American religion that emerged during the 1830s when a young man in upstate New York, Joseph Smith, claimed to have discovered buried golden tablets inscribed with new religious instructions from heaven. Smith’s followers ultimately migrated to Utah. There, they created their heaven on earth centered in Salt Lake City, and there it remains, though plenty of Mormons reside elsewhere too.

I met my first Mormon in high school, a kid named David Bedwell. He was not unusual in any discernible way. I don’t even know how or why I knew he was a Mormon. I assumed Mormons were Christians like everyone else (except us Jews).

Then I started going out West to ski and met lots more Mormons. Seventy per cent of Utahns are Mormons, and Utahns are nice. Unusually nice – polite, solicitous, well-mannered beyond what you’d expect in, say, New York City. (No, let’s be realistic and compare Utahns to, say, Chicagoans. Nicer than most Chicagoans. WAY nicer than most New Yorkers.)

Mormons are more than nice; they are unusually successful in American society. They are relatively affluent (Utah median income is $45,726 vs. $41,994 nationwide); relatively generous (22% of Mormons give $5,000 a year or more to church-related causes, vs. 9% of Southern Baptists and 2% of Catholics, according to J. Quin Monson of BYU and David Campbell of Notre Dame, quoted in the Boston Phoenix); and relatively self-sacrificing. At any moment there are about 50,000 young Mormons giving a year or so of their lives as missionaries – proselytizing, to be sure, but also doing good and helping others. The LDS Church strongly urges its youth to be missionaries; Mitt Romney served as a Mormon missionary for 2½ years.

And Mormons have stable families. While many Mormons divorce at rates comparable to other Americans, Mormons who commit to one another in the demanding “temple marriage” show only a 6% divorce rate. (Source: BYU Prof. Daniel K. Judd, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.)

Mormon family stability traces back to some unusual Mormon “family values.” From the BBC website:

“Mormon families differ from other families in that they can continue to exist as families after earthly death; and they live with the expectation that they will live again with their ancestors and their eventual descendants. Mormon parents regard it as their duty … to have children in order to create physical bodies for spirits to come to earth in order to fullfil God’s plan.”

I can think of two other religious groups that have been extraordinarily successful in their respective societies despite being tiny minorities (1.8% to 1.9% of the population), and in the face of religious persecution that sometimes rises to the level of violence: Jews in America, and Sikhs in India. The basic beliefs of Mormons, Jews and Sikhs may have little in common, but all three groups share a commitment to the centrality of family life.

(Sikhs occupy a niche in Hindu-dominated Indian society strikingly analogous to that of Jews in America. Carol and I know a lot of Sikhs, and we spent a month in India as the guest of Sikhs. It’s a long story, don’t ask.)

When it comes down to it, I don’t care what religious beliefs my President holds as long as he or she is doing a job for me. On that score, Mitt and I seem to diverge. Facing the same kind of voter hostility because of his Mormonism that John F. Kennedy faced in 1960 on account of his Roman Catholicism, Romney just delivered a major speech about faith in public life. He felt compelled to reassure voters he believes “that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind.” While he called for religious tolerance in public life, Romney also said “nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places,” and added: “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.”

Romney may welcome more demonstrations of religiosity in public life but lately I’ve had a bellyful of it. I deplore the litmus tests candidates feel compelled to take these days as they try to out-pander one another for the votes of the faithful. I’m with JFK who in his 1960 speech said: “I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”

Yeah, Mitt, I knew John Kennedy and, believe me, you are no John Kennedy. And by the way, where did you pick up that ridiculous nickname?

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Congratulations to my baby sister Judith Susan Joseph Thompson Assisi, affectionately known as Hey You, on her release from thralldom. Welcome to the free world, Toots. Now get to work on your tennis game.

Couple of years ago I couldn’t spell ‘young adult author.’ Now I are one.

I appeared at ten public high schools and middle schools during my recent trip to Chicago:

• One Chicago middle school (Thurgood Marshall) invited me back as “Writer in Residence.” For a week in late March, I’ll be teaching seventh and eighth graders how to write narrative.

• Another (Montefiore Special School) has invited me back for a presentation to three schools — Montefiore and two other nearby elementary schools.

• And a third (North River Elementary) has asked me to consider being commencement speaker.

I am deeply gratified and, frankly, stunned. When asked about being commencement speaker, my first reaction was to laugh nervously and blurt something like, ‘Oh, SURELY you can do better than me.’ And ‘Writer in Residence’? Holy moley.

There’s more. The Chicago Public Schools have taken a strong interest in TO LOVE MERCY, my first novel. An autographed copy has been hand-carried to Rufus Williams, the president of Chicago Public Schools, and the wheels are now turning inside CPS headquarters. I don’t know what will come of this, but fingers, toes and you-know-whats are crossed. (Eyes, fool.)

Add to that, we sold or handed out close to 450 copies of TO LOVE MERCY during my 2 1/2 weeks in Chicago. Most of these copies were bought by the schools where I appeared.

What fascinates me is this novel’s appeal down to seventh grade. As I’ve said before, I didn’t think I was writing a young-adult novel; if anything, I thought I was writing an OLD-adult novel. TO LOVE MERCY contains a little language, plus references to pederasty and murder, and the historical references will sail right over most kids’ heads. But it’s also a book about kids, with kids as protagonists … and boy-type kids, at that; it’s written in words of one and two syllables (”Fog Index” = 4th grade); and its themes of race and religion, conflict and reconciliation are just what schools want kids to be thinking and talking about. Plus, with its strong Chicago setting, it’s especially appealing to Chicago schools.

I have no problem with kids as readers. If a good book can change a life, it’s likelier to change an open young life than a jaded older one. Face it, the world wants us all in cubbies of some sort; I’m comfortable enough in this YA cubby, as long as I can continue writing what I want to write and not be asked to talk down to readers.

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Regarding my last blog (”Boys and books, Part II”), Rich Weinfeld asked me to clarify that, although both his grade-school-age sons confirmed the statistics about homophobic insults, the stats were drawn from SMART BOYS by Sanford Cohn and originated in a study by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Network. Also, the assertion that men and women differ genetically at about the same 1%-2% rate that humans differ from chimpanzees, comes from Rich’s book HELPING BOYS TO SUCCEED IN SCHOOL, not Michael Gurian’s; Rich found it in a Washington Post article that cited an MIT study.

Last word on getting boys to read goes to Son Sam, who comments: “There needs to be a way that boys see that girls like smart, well read guys. Man, when I figured that out is when reading really started becoming exciting.”

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com