Why Don't People Read As Much As They Use To? (Maybe They Never Did)

Marshall McLuhan

Imagine a world awash with important literature, where vital things have been written down: penetrating essays, profound print journalism, and deeply entertaining and gratifying fiction--but also a world where none of it is actually read by most of the people, a world where the average teenager can’t name a book that they have (completely or voluntarily) read by the time they’re about to enter college. Imagine such a world where long established and well honored newspapers are going out of business because not enough people read them any longer. Imagine a world that had struggled, even unto death for the privilege--no, the right to read, but had quickly forgotten this hard won battle to provide (me) the common citizenry with the luxury of being capable of reading in the first place. Now imagine Simon Ings’s short story, Russian Vine, in which some alien race has nefariously and entirely "pruned" the peoples of Earth of their ability to read and thus returning them to the darkness of their preliterate state of being. After doing so they then become invaders of the Earth turning us all into slaves for their own amusements. If we can we all may need to re-read (or read for the first time) the dark pronouncements of Marshall McLuhan regarding the decline that may accompany the onslaught of a primarily verbal Age of Television. An Age ripe with the availability of 24 hour news but devoid of the capacity to make any useful sense of it.

I'm certain that I have not fully grasped the meaning of Mr.Ings story. This is a complex read, made so intentionally by the author’s abstract and non-figurative style as his device (I think) to help the reader achieve some feel for what it may be like to be illiterate. I’ve never encountered a story like it. I’m going to have to read it several more times to feel any confidence that I understand its whole meaning.

[Photos taken from the Internet - is that legal?]