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Reading Between the Lines
Imagine this scenario taking place at the local Wal-Mart. A trendy
young mom, toddlers in tow, wheels her cart into the book aisle.
Momentarily ignoring the kids, she scrutinizes the eye-catching
titles and brightly colored dust jackets neatly arranged on the
shelves. She begins with television personality Dr. Phil McGraw’s
The Ultimate Weight Solution, then puzzles over Alan Paton’s
classic Cry, the Beloved Country, with its bold blue and
orange sticker proclaiming it "The newest selection from
Oprah’s Book Club." She doesn’t seem to notice
the eclectic mix of liberal and conservative titles, including
Bill O’Reilly’s Who’s Looking Out for You?
and Laura Ingraham’s polemical Shut Up and Sing. Yet
she can’t miss the equally provocative Michael Moore’s
Dude, Where’s My Country? nor Hillary Clinton’s
highly-touted Living History.
Then she spots Steve Martin’s new book, The Pleasure
of My Company, which she remembers Martin discussing on Aaron
Brown’s News Night (CNN). She vaguely recognizes the
names of the rest of the pack, the best-selling giants like Clive
Cussler, Nicholas Sparks, Tom Clancy, David Balducci, and Patricia
Cornwell. She notes the clump of Harry Potter books, which she
already owns, and settles finally on John Steinbeck’s East
of Eden, billed as "the book that brought Oprah’s
Book Club back." It’s big and heavy, but she may have
time to squeeze it in. She wedges the volume between a jug of
Tide and a bag of Mcintosh apples (her favorite), and steers the
cart and family toward the checkout lines, taking a quick, furtive
peek at her watch. It’s almost dinner time.
This innocent little transaction, and thousands like it taking
place every day across the country, are nevertheless part of a
larger cultural swing in which books become ordinary consumer
items like bottled water or underarm deodorant. And thus demystified,
books become part of business culture, marketing strategies, and
corporate decision-making. At some point, an executive, not an
author or artist, will call the shots. Books are now packaged
and sold in much the same way as television shows and movies,
which often are "tied in" to previous book sales—Harry
Potter and The Lord of the Rings being obvious examples
here.
But, unlike TV dinners and microwave popcorn, books become intimate
features of the consumer’s mind and personality, so their
availability and diversity make a crucial difference in the quality
of life. Books frame the way we live, becoming the mental landmarks
that allow us to discover our individual tastes and larger cultural
values. The day-to-day experience of American citizens is materially
different today because of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, Anne Frank’s Diary, Betty Friedan’s
The Feminine Mystique, and Ralph Nader’s Unsafe
at Any Speed, four books among many that reshaped the pattern
of American life. The freedom to agree—or disagree—with
such books is a basic political right. Furthermore, the ability
to find and access such books is also part of the political enfranchisement
of all Americans. Freedom is fully expressed in autonomy, the
freedom to put freedom into action. Consumers would be horrified
and outraged if a corporate outlet deliberately reduced the available
choices of digital cameras, say, or athletic shoes. But, like
it or not, that is exactly what is happening in regard to the
marketing of books at chain stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart, and
to a lesser degree, at bookstores like Barnes and Noble, Borders,
and Waldenbooks, venues where the primary business, after all,
is the selling and purveying of books.
The proliferation of Wal-Mart stores in the decade of the 90’s
and the evolving popularity of the Oprah Book Club coincided,
like intersecting vectors, to create a unique synergy, a kind
of one-two punch previously unseen in the publishing trade. An
endorsement by Oprah and subsequent adoption by Wal-Mart became
an instant passport to best-sellerdom for new titles and resurrected
old ones. Certainly, it was good citizenship on the part of Wal-Mart
executives to expand the readership of national treasures like
John Steinbeck and Toni Morrison. That is not the issue. What
concerns many cultural observers, like David Kirkpatrick of The
New York Times, is the large number of authors who are shut
out, creating a de facto kind of censorship that tends to "homogenize"
popular culture.
The numbers are telling. Chain stores in general, and Wal-Mart
in particular, increased their market share of intellectual properties
exponentially during the last decade. Such mass merchandisers
improved their book sales by 30%, music sales (audiotapes and
CD’s) by 50 %, while utterly dominating the sale of DVD’s.
According to Fitzpatrick, the "disconnect" between consumer
autonomy and corporate policy is dramatized by the appearance
of branch offices of major record labels near the corporate headquarters
of Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Arkansas. That Bible Belt location
has made it easy for critics to see Wal-Mart as the victim or
perpetrator of some kind of Evangelical or Pentecostal Christian
conspiracy, possibly because the chain has championed the sale
of a series of Christian video cartoons called Veggie Tales
that feature homilies delivered by talking tomatoes and cucumbers.
Nearly three million copies of Jonah, the latest tale, have been
sold, one of every four copies at a Wal-Mart outlet. Individual
artists and authors who have benefited from Wal-Mart’s highly
selective largesse include the Dixie Chicks (before their recent
anti-war sentiments), and rabidly conservative writers like Ann
Coulter.
Other evidence of Wal-Mart’s pervasive influence takes the
form of pre-censorship by big publishers (like Harper Collins)
who routinely hold back certain tiles with "explicit"
content and even design book jackets to suit the tastes of the
Wal-Mart buyers who have willy-nilly become the gatekeepers for
a large and growing segment of American culture.
But is Wal-Mart’s America the real one? The big giant virtually
eliminates all rap music, including Eminem, even altering the
video version of the film 8 Mile, just as it cut footage
from the highly popular and successful Mexican film, Y Tu Mama
Tambien. Considering the fact that over one million shoppers
enter a Wal-Mart each week, doesn’t the ideal of good corporate
citizenship and the code of "best practice" speak volumes
about the giant’s rather quaint and patronizing assessment
of the marketplace? Of course, Wal-Mart is free to sell whatever
books it pleases, and the company has not broken any laws in this
department as it has in the hiring of illegal aliens and the failure
to promote women and minorities, an egregious practice that triggered
a spate of law suits. The issue, again, is free and open dissemination
of intellectual property so that citizens can make informed choices
and participate in much-needed national dialogues on a long list
of social and cultural ills. For example, conspicuously absent
from the Wal-Mart shelves are the many books, pro- and con, which
examined the war in Iraq—and its tragic aftermath. Is there
any other major conflict that was embarked upon with less of a
national town meeting? No, Wal-Mart is not solely responsible
for the lack of informed debate about the war, but it does bear
responsibility for recasting our cultural image in its own likeness.
With big power comes big responsibility. And the citizenry that
empowered Wal-Mart and other big chains can always reclaim their
autonomy by voting with their feet.
An interesting parable that speaks to this situation occurred
in Decatur when Kroger opened a giant super market near the intersection
of U.S. 36 and Route 121. Within two years Wal-Mart opened a store
on immediately adjacent property, and for a few months it seemed
as if the Kroger store and a K-Mart directly across Highway 121
would surely succumb. Traffic dwindled at both stores, and the
K-Mart did ultimately close its doors. But the Kroger survived
by providing better service, higher quality, and greater diversity,
including fresh lamb chops, bok choy, and "free range"
eggs. Competition forced the store to offer more discounts and
display the goods more attractively. The important lesson here
is that customers are willing to support choice, and if that rule
applies to eggs and meat, why not films, music, and books? Some
observers may take the long view and point out that choices have
been dwindling for a long time as small-town and village newspapers
close up shop, following Mom and Pop grocery stores, and privately-owned
bookstores. But there is still room in a diverse twenty-first
century America for all of them if consumers truly want them to
persist.
The situation for the reader of books is even more complicated
because of the advent of computers and the web. In some ways,
the computer has robbed consumers of time as they hack their way
through "spam" and "pop-up" advertisements.
Some critics, notably Sven Birkerts in his highly provocative
and sobering book, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading
in an Electronic Age, argue that we have experienced a cultural
sea-change, a fundamental paradigm shift. Birkerts had owned a
bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but after a teaching stint at
the University of Michigan, he concluded that younger, computer-literate
readers just don’t "get it." These web-site addicts
and nocturnal perusers of "blogs" may no longer have
the patience or mindset to slog through a dense novel by Henry
James--or even a contemporary tome like Jonathan Franzen’s
The Corrections, or David Foster Wallace’s Infinite
Jest.
But if people don’t read books, they won’t buy books.
And a shrinking book market means a further shrinking of choices.
That downsized market is also a painful result of illiteracy,
as shown decades ago by Jonathan Kozol in his classic Illiterate
America. One of the largest segments of illiteracy is the
Hispanic population, many of whom prefer Spanish, the language
that will surely overtake English as the most spoken tongue during
the first quarter of this century. Where will this large Hispanic
readership find books and stories about itself? Will those future
titles find shelf space in Anglo-dominated markets? What about
all the small press and university press titles, and other specialized
titles that typically don’t gain entrée to Wal-Mart
or even to Barnes and Noble, even though the latter has done a
marvelous job of helping authors and itself with public readings
and book clubs? More can be done in all these areas.
So the contemporary reader is faced with problems of accessibility
to books as well as erosion of the culture of reading as it is
replaced by "information technology." On top of those
woes, books of paper and cardboard and leather face challenges
from audio books, videotapes, DVD’s, and magazines (electronic
and traditional). Book sales are often flat at some Barnes and
Noble stores, but sales of videos and magazines are increasing
around 5% per year. At public libraries, there is a similar story,
in spite of strong circulation driven by diehard readers and walk-in
patrons seeking help or information. Videos and audios are in
strong and growing demand. Lee Ann Fisher, the City Librarian
who oversees the 400,000 items at the Decatur Public Library,
observes somewhat wryly, "On Friday we become a video store."
Then she adds with a twinkle in her eye, "Maybe I can hook
you to be a reader."
If the reader is hooked, the final hurdle is the sheer size and
scale of the reading enterprise, a massive footnote to the information
explosion. According to The Bowker Annual: Library and Book
Trade Almanac, about 150,000 new titles appear in America
each year, and hundreds of thousands are still in print, as documented
in the pages of the annual editions of Books in Print.
That number helps to explain Sara Nelson’s very recent publication
of So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading.
There is simply no practical way for any reader to simplify the
process of selection without professional help, or "channeling,"
as one book executive calls it. Most of the channeling takes the
form of lists or actual displays based on lists, like the "new
book" book displays at most libraries. Many readers utilize
easily-found lists like the weekly ones appearing in The New
York Times or USA Today. Readers also use Amazon.com
and such popular web sites as Bartleby.com (which offers complete
texts of books in the public domain), Access the Great Books,
and Bookslut! Most patrons don’t realize that lists
are made of lists in a seemingly endless regression that involves
a chain of professional readers. NoveList is a data base
for librarians and other professionals that offers links or "author
read-alikes" in the way that Amazon.com and others cue customers:
"If you liked this book, you’ll also like. . . ."
Baker and Taylor, the largest wholesaler of books to libraries,
offers an option called "Automatically Yours," whereby
librarians preselect popular authors and automatically receive
their latest works. But, good as they are, such lists tend to
limit the chances of exposure for new authors, and readers are
always in the position of following someone else’s recommendation.
It’s a rare moment when a reader receives a personal recommendation
from someone like a librarian or a sales clerk at a bookstore,
but that person-to-person communication helps to break down the
officialdom of the formal lists and keep us away from re-establishing
a Canon, or an ultimate and exclusive list of the only books that
shall be read. The sharp reader has to be on the lookout for pitfalls
from the left and the right.
Egon, the brainy scientist in the 1984 comedy Ghostbusters,
makes the petulant comment that "print is dead." But
Jennifer Nippert, the Manager of the Springfield Barnes and Noble,
sharply disagrees. She is an avid reader (like almost all the
booksellers and librarians in the area), and she can’t imagine
a world without books. "People like the physical sensation
of holding books. Nobody has come up with an e-book that people
like. Books beat the Internet because you can make your own links."
In a recent column, Bill Tammeus of the Kansas City Star, sounded
a similar note: "Books provide the means for nearly the whole
population—not just the elite—to be educated and empowered
to think critically." And Harold Bloom, the distinguished
literary critic and author How to Read and Why, answers
the question "Why read?" in this way: "It matters,
if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their own judgments
and opinions, that they continue to read for themselves."
These are wise words to remember on the next trip to the mall
or shopping center.
Readers can find help everywhere, if they take the time to look.
Nationally, there is a booming interest in book clubs and discussion
groups. Most libraries and book stores now sponsor such activities,
and three new books have appeared on the topic, notably Rachel
Jacobsohn’s The Reading Group Handbook: Everything You
Need to Know to Start Your Own Book Group. Readers may not
be able to find the sort of utopian bookstore run by Meg Ryan
in the 1998 romantic fantasy You’ve Got Mail. Families
won’t return to those perfect evenings when well-dressed
parents and children sat around the blazing hearth and read three-decker
Victorian novels by Thackeray or Dickens. But it is possible to
make more informed choices about books and to demand better access
to the titles in print. Yet nothing will change unless the reading
habits change first. The Decatur Public School System instituted
the DEAR Program a few years ago, "Drop Everything and Read."
It’s only a fantasy, but wouldn’t it be grand to see
truck drivers park their rigs and dive into copies of Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Or legislators sitting
on the marble steps of the Capitol, passionately arguing fine
points in Plato’s Republic—or even bankers momentarily
setting investment portfolios aside and contemplating Vachel Lindsay’s
Gospel of Beauty? It’s only a fantasy, of course,
but one of the things reading teaches us is that anything is possible.
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