On whiskers – The Economist:

‘The experiment was simple; so too, you may have thought, was the task. Students of literature at two American universities were given the first paragraphs of “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens and asked to read and then explain them. In other words: some students reading English literature were asked to read some English literature from the mid-19th century. How hard could it be? Very, it turns out. The students were flummoxed by legal language and baffled by metaphor. A Dickensian description of fog left them totally fogged. They could not grasp basic vocabulary: one student thought that when a man was said to have “whiskers” it meant he was “in a room with an animal I think…A cat?” The problem was less that these students of literature were not literary and more that they were barely even literate.’

(…)

‘Even the educated young, another greybeard said, have “no habits of application and concentration”.
Such laments should be treated with caution: almost the only thing bookish sorts love more than books is complaining about books and reading. They always have done: the greybeard above was Dickens in, ironically, “Bleak House”. Almost as soon as people stopped fretting about the arrival of reading—Socrates feared it would “produce forgetfulness” in those who used it; Ecclesiastes says that “of making many books there is no end”—people started fretting about its decline. As Ecclesiastes also says, “there is nothing new under the sun”.’

(…)

‘Smartphones are blamed for dwindling reading habits—and certainly the number of distractions has increased. But reading has always been a bother. “A big book”, said Callimachus, an ancient Greek poet, “is a big evil.” This is particularly true after lunch. You sit down to read then, as one writer noted, the sun streams in, the day feels “50 hours long”, the reader “rubs his eyes” then finally places the book “under his head and…falls into a light sleep”. Given that that particular reader was a fourth-century monk and ascetic he was probably not distracted by Snapchat.’

(…)

‘By contrast, decreasing literary sophistication may lead to decreasing political sophistication. Our analysis of Britain’s parliamentary speechesfound that they have shrunk by a third in a decade. We also analysed almost 250 years of inaugural presidential addresses using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. George Washington’s scored 28.7, denoting postgraduate level, while Donald Trump’s came in at 9.4, the reading level of a high-schooler.’

(…)

‘Reading is not merely a tool: it is also one of life’s great pleasures, as Dickens knew well. As Joe, the kind blacksmith in “Great Expectations”, says: “Give me a good book...and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better.” Once people forget that, things really will feel bleak.’

Read the article here.

Less pleasure, less sophistication, a bit more bleakness, more antidepressants.
Back to the Middle Ages.

But literature will survive, serious literature will survive, maybe not as a mass medium.

As a secret cult.

I would note one thing: people don’t want to read, but they want to write. Very much so.