Ogre, I have to agree with you that the quote grates a little…especially the “empty minds” part. I don’t believe that from one generation to the next, there is much difference in the quality of the people. Look at this board…it is full of people posting here to discuss art & culture, debate issues, etc. Not all of us are brilliant, and not every conversation is earth-shattering, but at least we are engaged and talking. So what if many of us could not have imagined even 10 years ago that we would “talk” to strangers all around the world via the Internet? Does the fact that it is new technology make the conversation somehow less valid? Does it make the thinking somehow less valid? Books are a form of communication, that’s all. Personally, I love to read, and I get a lot from it. But I wouldn’t necessarily say that the time I spend on non-book pursuits is caused by or causes an “empty mind.”
Precisely. Thank you. And the kicker is that most people would agree with that, if I weren’t calling down a famous and iconic author. I mean, it’s a pretty obvious conclusion. But hero-worship being what it is…
Ogre and Askia, would you two stop feeling each other up? You’re making me blush.
That said, cool it. Even mild insults toward other posters are meant only for the Pit. Disagree all you want about what Harper Lee has said, but leave each other’s throats in good working condition. I’m sure you two can discuss this like rational adults; if not, either quit the thread or take it to the Pit.
I loved creating scenes and characters in my head. You are told what the house, or the villain or the heroine look like in film. I think people who don’t read miss out on the mental exercise reading affords. You miss out on a lot of the nuances an author paints through his use of language. The poetry of writing, so to speak. It may be a good rendering of the material to film, but it always lacks the intangible something that can only be captured through reading well-crafted paragraphs. My opinion…I’m sure some people will disagree.
I also hate finding out what musicians and radio personalities look like. It rarely matches the image I have in my mind. And that just blows.
Well, there’s literacy and there’s literacy. (I wouldn’t touch 90% of the Bestseller List with a 10-foot pole.) There’s the ability to read, which I agree includes a higher percentage of the public than it did back in the 20s and 30s. But most of what people read on the internet would be considered information rather than entertainment (with the StraightDope striking a nice balance between the two). I don’t equate the two. Of course there are exceptions. Folks around here are very well-read, for the most part. I don’t read nearly as much as I’d like to, mostly because I don’t have time. But I know LOTS of people who NEVER read. My husband is one of 'em. He only reads parts manuals. He’s up on current events and pop culture, but he doesn’t understand the concept of reading for entertainment.
Then I quit.
Maybe so, but what makes you think the percentage or the number of people who read for entertainment was any higher back then, especially since there were so many people who simply were not educated enough to read at all?
Also, I’m a little unclear about the distinction between reading information and what you’re referring to as “reading for entertainment,” especially in regard to the internet. In other words, if it’s printed, and I’m reading it for entertainment, then it’s entertainment, right? I mean, I also read the Bad Astronomy website. That’s a whole lot of information, but it’s entertaining.
People read the news, opinion pieces, etc. on line. They read information on medical issues or movie stars and that sort of thing. I don’t know any people who read novels or the history of the Civil War as interpreted by Shelby Foote on line (though I know there must be a few out there). Do you see the distinction now?
I see what you mean, but I’m not convinced that there is a real distinction. Novels are certainly available online. People read the internet for the same variety of reasons that they read books…information and entertainment. And there’s lots of sources for both.
Sorry I didn’t address this part of your post. I think people read for entertainment purposes more back then because their entertainment options were much fewer than they are today. They had books, plays, movies, if they were lucky enough to have a theater (and could afford it), and radio. Many options were unavailable to poor people. My dad never had a television growing up. No one had them when he was little, but even as a teenager, they’d go to the tavern if they wanted to watch a fight. You just didn’t see many families with a TV in their home. Many families were too poor to afford a radio. You’d buy sheet music when you liked a tune…if you were lucky enough to own a piano (my mom did this).
I’m not sure that this translates into “more people read for entertainment back then.” After all, fewer people, especially in rural places, even had the ability to read. People made their own entertainment, but I’m not sure more people, especially among the poor, turned to books. This would suggest some fundamental difference in the people of yesteryear as opposed to the people of today, and I’m pretty convinced no such difference exists. People inclined to read still read. I’d be very surprised if there aren’t a lot more of them today than there were back then.
Don’t let your assumptions bite you in the butt. In the 1930s, 95% of Americans were literate (our population was much more rural in the 1930s - so I wouldn’t say "few rural people could read). Current stats have us at 97%. I wouldn’t say we are any more or less literate now than we were. And with TV, movies, video games and the internet - I think Miss Lee is probably right - there is far less incentive for those of us who can read to read.
I’m trying to find stats on the U.S., but this seems to back up what I’ve been trying to say. I know that other forms of reading can be considered “entertainment”, I think my original point is illustrated pretty well with the reading vs. television stat above.
Actually, this site is very interesting. The correlation between reading and test scores, staying out of trouble, etc., is something I wasn’t aware of before.
Here’s an actual link. D’oh! What is Literacy? | National Literacy Trust | National Literacy Trust
But what were they reading? Pulp novels were very popular. Just because there was no TV, it doesn’t mean that people weren’t looking for easy/mindless entertainment. I’ll bet a lot more people were reading those kind of books than the classics, just as is true today.
I’ll add that literacy (in the U.S.) is defined as: "The 2003 assessment defines literacy as “using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.”
So we’re talking the ability to get by…I’m guessing those who are functionally literate are probably not reading for pleasure.
I don’t see Miss Lee claiming that they sat around reading Shakespere to each other - just that they read for entertainment. And, in fact, I don’t see her making any comments about anyone other than her family being readers.
Let’s go back to the beginning and look at what those Harper Lee quotes were:
Of course, kids are still read to by their parents. But that misses the point behind this quote. People today have no understanding of a society in which reading aloud in a family setting was a major form of entertainment. Kids were included in this, but adults read to one another. Regularly. Daily. As much a part of their entertainment package as sitting down in front of the television would be today.
This attitude toward public reading is essentially unimaginable in our world. It’s not just the lack of other forms of entertainment, although in Monroeville in the 1930s and earlier, this would have been as severe as others have mentioned. It’s the place that printed material had in the society. Books were a source of uplift, of moral values, of the notions of dignity and decency that made for a civilized society. Certainly more modern writers had by that time rebelled against that attitude, but the vast mass of American publishing, novels, magazines, children books, even most popular literature down to the pulps and Sunday comics, still help firm to these values.
Sharing text within the family is in no sense comparable to shopping at B&N for the latest bestseller or surfing the net for interesting sites. The moral component has vanished and never be recovered. For the author of a book whose center is the moral values that text provided so that the forces of dignified civilization could hold out against the small-minded nature of provincial bigotry, this past is a touchstone of what made her different from all those she saw around her. You cannot diminish that in any way by trying to suggest she’s a cranky oldster.
And that’s what the next quote brings to the fore:
You can’t imagine what that past was like if you’re so young that you’ve grown up in a post world. Post-television. Post-civil rights. Post-Sunbelt. Post-youth movement. Post-class structure. Post-the-South-as-a-different-world. You can’t use statistics to get at the core of those differences. Some things you have to live through, to be immersed daily in a before and after, to understand how every action and reaction, every interpersonal encounter, every decision by those in authority and those without power, have changed. And it has. The world is totally different today from when I was young in the 1950s, and that was a world away from the South in 1930s.
As the empty minds comment. Well, I get it. She’s right. You can’t read these Boards without understanding perfectly what she meant. The world is truly split between those with empty minds and those whose minds are not so empty, and there was a time and class where it might be possible to separate yourself from the other. That entire world is long gone, and a much more egalitarian world has taken its place. In many ways that modern world is much better for many more people, including me, since my upbringing didn’t even come close to a genteel middle class, let alone the kind of world that a lawyer like Atticus Finch represented in the 1930s.
In short, if there ever was a You Don’t Get It thread, Ogre, this is a prime Grade-AA example. You zoomed past any kind of context for Lee’s quote and read it with, well, an empty mind. One of the definitions of an empty mind is a mind devoid of the proper context in which to put statements about aspects of the world outside their personal experience. That’s the part of the world, especially the internet world, that is especially widespread, and it’s not a better world at all.
I just ran this whole thread past my father, who was born in 1928 in rural South Carolina, and his reaction was a chuckle and a “cranky old biddy, isn’t she?”
Apparently so, Pop.
Oh, and you have absolutely no idea of what context I understand outside my personal experience. I grew up in the Deep South around many, many older relations, including my parents, who were both born just before the Depression, and who were (well, are. My dad’s still alive.) poor their entire lives, including the time in which they raised me. My dad is from a large South Carolina farming family, and my mom was from a dirt-freaking-poor Appalachian family who actually had to retreat into the mountains during the Depression and live hand-to-mouth off what they could raise and hunt. I was raised with family entertainment of precisely the type you describe. We read to each other. We ate together. We hiked, camped, hunted, and fished together. We discussed books, the Bible, poems, and stories together. I do not have a generation or two between my poor-as-fuck rural Southern ancestors and myself. I understand what you’re saying perfectly. I do Get It, as you so arrogantly seem to think I don’t.
In other words, careful with your assumptions, Exapno. You’re setting yourself up for a “mind like an empty room” designation.
Oh, and don’t forget, I met Harper Lee. Talked to her. Asked her questions. I dare say I Get It a lot more better than you give me credit for…possibly better than you yourself do. How did I meet her and talk to her? My mother-in-law (also from rural Alabama) was one of the former heads of the Alabama Library Association, and knew Ms. Lee well.
97% isn’t significantly higher than 95%? Well, I honestly don’t know. I’d have to know the statistical margin of error. But just for grins, let’s take the numbers at face value. In 1930, the US population was 123,202,624. 95% of that is 117,042,493. Today, the US population is 299,079,442. 97% of that is 290,107,033. This means that in 2006, more than twice the number of people that were alive in the entire US in 1930 can read.
Now whether that number of people read for entertainment or not is a question I can’t answer, but statistically speaking, the odds are damn good that more people do so now than did in 1930.
Basically, you folks are all saying “I know lots and LOTS of people who never read.” Yeah, well, 1) I bet you would have said that about a lot MORE people in the 1930’s, and 2) pft. I know LOTS and LOTS who do read. And so do you.
If there’s anybody related to this discussion who Doesn’t Get It, it’s Nelle Harper Lee.
One other thing. Before you go off assuming what sorts of cultural context I might or might not understand, read this thread…not for it’s emotional content, but for the descriptions of my parents and what I have learned from them.