I’d like to point out a silver lining here. For most branches of the arts, there are institutions looking for artists to support. WELL-FUNDED institutions. One example is the Gilmore Foundation in my town, which searches the globe for pianists, finds one, and surprises him or her with a $500,000 prize every 4 years (http://gilmore.org/). On a smaller scale, a local progressive band I guest with, Blue Dahlia, was just granted enought money from the Michigan Council of the Arts to record its original soundtrack to the Buster Keaton silent, “The General” AND pay for three live performances with the film around the state.
Sooo…
Poets still get published, plays still get produced, composers still see their works premiered, and artists are still exhibited. Maybe the water cooler crowd is more likely to talk about Rachel & Ross on “Friends,” but scratch the surface and you’re likely to find creative people being creative everywhere, as well as people who appreciate them.
In almost every era it seems there is an undercurrent that the arts (including music) are non-essentials. Unfortunately that’s why they are the first to be cut from our NYC public school curriculum whenever there’s a budget “crisis.” It’s too bad, because that more than anything reflects our unique humanity.
Good to hear that there are groups everywhere who will continue to support the arts no matter what else is happening.
Philo
Very interesting thread. Allow me to contribute a couple of things.
First, I would agree with much of what has been said here–an exception being Chuck Clark’s assertion that modern poets are lazy. Having worked on one of my poems off and on for five years, I can assure that poets still work very hard at the craft.
Many people bemoan the fact that poetry no longer rhymes and follows no particular rhythms. That’s generally true, although some of the older rhyme-and-meter style still gets printed. This is a matter of taste. With all due respects to that school, I can hardly stand to listen to it or read it. It’s a matter of taste.
Others complain that poetry is too dense and obscure of language to be meaningful to most readers. This does not represent a change in poetry–it’s a change in readers. T.S. Elliot was certainly not any easier to read and does not use more direct language than people being published today. Even more true of giants like Hart Crane. I think the lack of readership of poetry is about a general decline in literary reading–not a fundamental change in poets or poetry.
Having said that, I do think that the editorial process is too elitist and “inside”. I feel qualified to say that having published 17 or 18 poems in 2 1/2 years in nine or ten different magazines. There’s way too much of poets writing for other poets.
The current US poet laureate is Billy Collins. Mr. Collins’ work is known for being much more accessible and, if you will, down to earth, than is typical these days. I like it very much, actually. His readings are popular and his books sell well (for poetry). So, naturally, a lot of poets think he’s a bad choice!
If you want to explore what is going on in poetry these days I would recommend the current issue of POETRY magazine (double issue, 90th anniversary). I’d also strongly suggest visiting this website:
Here’s a poem I like a lot.
Facing It
by Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.
and here are two more with my thanks for your patience:
Let Evening Come
Jane Kenyon
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
“Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You In The Morning”
Alice Walker
Looking down into my fathers
dead face
for the last time
my mother said without
tears, without smiles
but with civility
“Good night, Willie Lee, Ill see you
in the morning.”
And it was then I knew that the healing
of all our wounds
is forgiveness
that permits a promise
of our return
at the end.
[ This Message was edited by: DaleWisely on 2002-10-13 16:11 ]
It’s important to remember that we don’t yet know who will turn out to be the significant artists of our era - that will be determined by the influence those artists have on future generations. What’s more, there are wonderful artists working in many media, some of which don’t fall into the old established categories. But to know about them, you need to be prepared to put a lot of time and effort into learning about what’s going on in the arts. There have never been all that many people prepared to do that, sometimes for the very good reasons that people are pursuing interests of their own.
I saw an interesting documentary on Harry Smith at the Vancouver Film Festival. He worked in the fields of song collecting, film, anthropology (collecting examples of culture from many groups), painting and drawing. His work was so rich and varied, he will surely be studied for decades, and he influenced many other artists, yet his name is not generally known.
[ This Message was edited by: Blackbird on 2002-10-13 16:11 ]
Hmmm.
I don’t know, if the argument is that the arts aren’t mainstream any more, then I guess I can agree. Certaily, in a mass media that regards PBS as ‘high brow’(!) then there isn’t going to be much in the way of the arts.
But as far as I can see the arts are alive, and as well (struggling) as they have ever been. I defer to the others who have pointed out some great current poets, artists and musicians, but I would add Seamus Heaney (surprised he didn’t come right to the top on THIS board!) for poetry and Steve Martland, Graham Fitkin, John Adams, John Zorn and Steve Reich for ‘classical’ music, and Lucian Freud for painting. Among the recently dead but still current I would add the great Messaen and Tippet.
I often hear this idea of a golden age’ where arts were more mainstream. I’m 40, and I wouldn’t say the bulk of my peers are particularly into the arts. The trouble is, the same is true when I think of my friends who are 60 or 20 as well.
So it’s still there. It takes some effort to hunt it out, but it is there. And my suspicion is that it has always been so.
But check out Seamus Heaney at http://www.ibiblio.org/dykki/poetry/heaney/heaney-cov.html
Fatveg
PS If you prefer your poetry to rhyme, that’s fine. But if you make it axiomatic that poetry has to rhyme, then you’re writing of much of the finest poetry from the last couple of centuries. The trouble is that much recent rhyming verse is to poetry what Thomas Kinkade is to painting 
(oops, Freud aint dead yet!)
[ This Message was edited by: fatveg on 2002-10-13 16:55 ]
Re Dale’s comment about elitism in publishing, I emphatically agree. There’s no continuum there–just insider elitism at one end (the editors at the major publishing houses tend to be astonishingly uniform in their educational and cultural backgrounds) and the mass-market, lowest-common-denominator bottom line at the other. Does anyone feel optimism that the phenomenon of Internet publishing can have a positive effect on this (at least regarding the written word, and perhaps, music?), by, as it were, returning “power to the people” by bypassing the gatekeepers? Or will it only make matters worse by burying quality in megatons of drivel?
Dale, Thanks for sharing those.
I like poetry that does not rhime, and uses words just unfamiliar enough to let me ponder what they really mean.
But also words so familiar they evoke strong mental images without a chance of missing their full meaning. And I love alliteration!
Where Are The Poets
Poets aren’t scarce,
Some are simply scared…
Some are scarred by sarcasm
Spoken thoughtlessly.
Why should I write for critical eyes
Or read for unhearing ears?
But I do, and
I’ll tell you why:
There are some
Whose souls can be touched
By a word fitly spoken
And given a place…
In a poem.
-Mack Hoover 10/13/2002-
[ This Message was edited by: Mack.Hoover on 2002-10-13 17:32 ]
I apologise to Dale and Mack and any others who consider themselves serious poets for what may seem to some to be an insulting assertion.
That said, I raise the question again, in hopefully gentler terms. As far as I can personally determine, much modern poetry, ESPECIALLY WHEN SPOKEN, is indistingushable from prose. So - in the absence of apparent rules, what then makes a particular string of words, howsomever punctuated, to be a poem?
When I try, I feel that I compose and write fairly well, yet I would never allege that any particular collection of my better phrases was poetry.
Are there some rules which elude my admittedly technically-oriented knowledge base? Or is it simply that poetry is whatever the writer says it is?
[ This Message was edited by: Chuck_Clark on 2002-10-13 23:17 ]
As Woody Allen said: ‘I don’t want
to achieve immortality through my
work. I want to achieve immortality
by not dying.’ I wish I could
stick around another century.
I can’t imagine what it will
be like. I think the arts
are about to undergo a
vast change–new media, new
technologies, art forms we
can barely imagine. I think
we live at the end of something like
the stone age, and that human
life in a hundred years may
be as different from our lives
as our lives are from
the cavemen.
The first half of the 20th
century had lots of artistic
and intellectual giants,
people who set vast trends.
The second half of the
century seemed to have
far fewer. In a curious way,
that’s healthy, because
instead of a few great
people and everybody else
running after, you have
lots of very good people
thinking for themselves.
That sort of thing
prepares the ground
for great happenings.
Something is coming,
human creativity being
about as unstoppable
as human sexuality,
and it’s gonna be
very interesting.
‘And what rough beast…’
well, probably it will
be a virtual beast…
It is interesting to read this thread especially after the conversation my husband and I had this afternoon. We are working on our 2nd C.D. together and though we do not have a record deal we are content in that fact. We have come to the place where we realize the freedom we have in not being dictated to by someone who has no idea of the magic in our hearts and music. We can do a C.D. the way we feel in our hearts it should be done. Choose the music that moves us and thus move others with it. Now I am not saying that to have world wide success would not be pleasing, but for us it is more important to touch one person with our real music than to be molded into something or someone we do not know.
As for poets, my husband Steve is my favorite poet, when I am down or need an ego boost, I ask him to recite this one.
Lifetimes have I waited,
to hold you,
Sleeping in my arms,
Like a child,
Safe and warm,
Beneath the moon,
Untill the morning sun,
Carresses your face,
and I can kiss your sweet lips,
and steal you from a dream.
Steve Tozer
I don’t know much about poetry. I spent lots of time in school reading it and learning to appreciate it but I still don’t care for it. Though I do want to address a couple of other issues raised by jim_mc
Years ago, publishing was a gentlemanly business. Its primary purpose was to promote art.
I respectfully disagree. The primary purpose of any business is to make money. The publishing business has never been an exception to this rule. In any industry you can point to specific examples of businesses who went down an unbeaten path and succeeded. But, they wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t figured thought they would turn a profit doing so. Only after they have become successful do they agrandize themselves by claiming to have adhered to a higher standard than their own self-interest. We don’t hear from the ones that went bankrupt.
Publishing today is a business like any other - bottom line profit motivated. If market research doesn’t show that a book will sell (and sell big), it doesn’t get published.
IMO the “market research” angle is a red herring and is more myth than reality (at least in terms of fictional book titles). True market research has little to do with what books get published and which do not. Sure, in general terms publishers know what kind of books sell well (genre, writing style, etc.) but, individual fictional titles are not generally custom tailored to fill some market niche. This is because publishers buy books AFTER they are already written and not BEFORE they are written. Furthermore, any successful editor will tell you that they don’t really know which books will be successful and which won’t – they have hunches but they don’t really know – do you think Raincoast Books ever thought they would sell millions of copies of Harry Potter? I don’t think so. Consider that a publisher has to sell 10,000 copies of a book title before it breaks even. Publishers promote established authors because they have a proven track record and an established audience – they are guaranteed sales The reality publishers need “bestsellers” that rake in tons of cash to make up for the losses they take on books that they lose money on.
So the shelves are full of Dean Koontz, John Grisham, Steven King and Danielle Steele. There are still great books being written, but they are published by the small houses with little in the budget for promotion. It’s as easy to buy a John Grisham book as it is to get a McDonalds hamburger. Try finding titles put out by intellectually oriented publishers like 4 Walls 8 Windows in an airport or a drugstore.
So, are you implying that being a writer of popular fiction precludes you from being a great writer? It’s popular to subscribe to the notion that popular literature is not worthwhile reading but this concept is largely the product of culture elitism, arrogance, and discrimination.
It would take too long to explain how this “serious” vs. “popular” literature phenomenon came but it happened during the late 19th century. “Serious” literature became that which was read by the academic elite in universities (nearly 100% men) whereas popular literature was that which was read by the public (of which more than 90% of the purchasers were women). Popular fiction was considered substandard because it was written such that it could be read by, and be enjoyable to, women who were (apparently) too ill-educated to “understand” the serious literature that the academics studied. The difference between serious and popular literature really had nothing do do with the quality of the writing; rather, it had everything to do with who was reading (men vs. women). Its well-documented so research it if you wish.
I suppose their are stylistic differences between some serious literature and some popular literature. Academics live in their on little la-la lands which tend to be pretty detached from the reality of most people. They like to sit in their offices and muse about how intelligent they suppose themselves to be while they analyze, scrutinize, and ponder – they need things to analyze, scrutinize, and ponder. On the other hand, most people want to be entertained – they need things that allow them to relax, escape, or fantasize. Neither need is better or worse – they are just different. Yet, as is always the case the academics think their need is superior and thus so is the literature. I suppose one could extend the same argument to the classical vs. folk (or popular) music debate?
IMO the attitude that you aren’t reading anything worthwhile unless some academic puts his “serious literature” stamp of approval on it has contributed to the downfall of literature in Western culture.
Take Shakespeare for example. Shakespeare’s plays are considered to be serious literature. But, Shakespeare was a working playwright – he made his living from writing popular plays. He had to write material he knew would be popular with all classes of people or else would be out of work. For all practical purposes he was a writer of popular fiction. Yet, Shakespeare is considered to serious literature – how can this be? That’s because his work (now about 400 years old) was studied in universities so therefore it transcended its original “popular” status and became “serious”. Furthermore, because it’s not written in modern English its difficult for most people to understand without study – hence it retains its “serious” status. Do you think people attended Shakespeare’s plays to analyze them? I think not. They just wanted to be entertained. Shakespeare’s plays do take a lot of work to understand but its not because the material is sophisticated (or even particularily good for that matter), its because its written an the equivalent of another language. IMO teaching Shakespeare in schools does more harm than good in terms of teaching literature.
Creating these two (artificial) classes of literature have created an interesting situation in terms of which literature will survive. Most literature that is printed is popular literature. A popular literature title has a pretty short lifespan (on year, two if it’s lucky). In order to survive for a longer period of time, a popular literature title must gain the “serious” stamp of approval through some kind of acedmic endorsement. Yet, this is not likely to happen because academics don’t approve of popular literature.
All that being said, I still think the main problem is that television (and movies to a lesser extent) is sucking up all the talented people with the lure of big money and then stifling their creativity by allowing market research to dictate what they create.
That’s probably partially true but I think for most people watching TV is simply easier and more enjoyable than reading the crappy books they became accustomed to reading in school. My goodness, give people decent books to read and they will. Look at the popularity of the Harry Potter books. Virtually every kid I know has copies of them. Finally a kids author wrote some books that kids actually want to read. Given the choice between reading Potter and watching TV many kids will choose the book.
Of course the cultural purists among us argue that having all the kids reading Potter is akin to having them all eating a McDonalds or shopping at Walmart. Then again, Ms. Rawling did what America’s school system failed to do, she pried their eyes away from the TV and got them to read. The purists want them to read something more serious – something like Shakespeare. Bravo for Ms. Rawling
On 2002-10-14 02:14, garycrosby wrote:
Years ago, publishing was a gentlemanly business. Its primary purpose was to promote art.
I respectfully disagree. The primary purpose of any business is to make money. The publishing business has never been an exception to this rule. In any industry you can point to specific examples of businesses who went down an unbeaten path and succeeded. But, they wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t figured thought they would turn a profit doing so.
This might be true of the US Gary; I don’t know. In Britain, as recently as twenty years ago, some academic publishers operated on a principle whereby they would publish two books expected to make a loss for every book expected to make a profit. The profitable books tended to be highly so, so the companies made a profit overall. They valued prestige which was measured not in profits but in the quality of their catalogue.
I have no idea of whether or not this practice is still adhered to but I rather doubt it.
[ This Message was edited by: Wombat on 2002-10-14 03:31 ]
Gary, when I say that publishing was a gentlemanly business, I mean that there were publishing companies that were started by members of the very wealthy leisure class who had no need of making more money. They may have been motivated by the desire to make a name for themselves as arbiters of taste and culture, though.
On 2002-10-14 02:14, garycrosby wrote:
Publishers buy books AFTER they are already written and not BEFORE they are written. Furthermore, any successful editor will tell you that they don’t really know which books will be successful and which won’t – they have hunches but they don’t really know – do you think Raincoast Books ever thought they would sell millions of copies of Harry Potter?
Well, all but one of the Harry Potter books were bought by the publisher before they were written. Everyone is pretty certain that the next one will be a best seller. Likewise most of the Stephen King titles. I once read an interview where King mused that if he handed Putnam a packet of his compiled grocery lists, they would publish it, and people would buy it!
So, are you implying that being a writer of popular fiction precludes you from being a great writer? It’s popular to subscribe to the notion that popular literature is not worthwhile reading but this concept is largely the product of culture elitism, arrogance, and discrimination.
I’m not an academic, nor do I consider myself a cultural elitist. I don’t think that popular fiction is all junk. I like Richard Russo, John Irving, Dom DeLillo and James Ellroy. I think there is some worthwhile reading on the best seller lists. Danielle Steele and Dean Koontz, though, are writing junk. So are a lot of the top 5 or 10 authors out there. Maybe I’m more unique in this aspect than I think, but I like to learn, and to be challenged, even when I’m being entertained.
I think for most people watching TV is simply easier and more enjoyable than reading the crappy books they became accustomed to reading in school. My goodness, give people decent books to read and they will. Look at the popularity of the Harry Potter books. Virtually every kid I know has copies of them. Finally a kids author wrote some books that kids actually want to read. Given the choice between reading Potter and watching TV many kids will choose the book.
Bravo for Ms. Rawling >
Amen! Now it’s our job (well, those of us who are parents, anyway) to see that our kids continue to read, and to read things that will challenge them and help them to grow intellectually.
P.S. - I like Shakespeare. Nobody had to tell me that his use of language in Romeo and Juliet was extraordinarily beautiful. I was 14 when we read it in school and I could tell for myself. It didn’t seem so foreign to me. I also like the sonnets quite a bit. I did get bogged down in some of his other plays, though. I’ll agree that there is plenty of more accessible drama that is quite worthwhile, and kids would probably benefit more from studying some of that.
Thanks for your comments, Gary.
On 2002-10-12 23:09, jim stone wrote:
When I was a young man, poetry was
big.
(…) Also, back then painting was
big. We were interested in and
excited about Picasso and Matisse.
I can’t think of a single contemporary
painter of importance. How come?
(…)
We were fascinated
by Stravinsky and Prokofief. I can’t
think of a single contemporary
classical composer of importance,
with the marginal exception of Philip
Glass.And I suppose the same thing goes
for novels, for plays…What’s happened? Any ideas?
Here’s my 2 x 12.5 ¢ worth :
I had the same feeling, until I finally went to the optometrist’s who cured my headaches with a pair 1-diopter glasses 
. What has it to do ? I saw the light : just getting old… 
Audience booed and whistled at Ravel, Stravinsky openings. Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse… couldn’t sell at first. Modigliani died from it. Poets ? Were said to be the only litterature with more authors than readers. Most of them got late recognition, if not too late. These are only samples of what today makes the new academism.
The problem of art culture is most of us have a lot of hindsight. It takes much more than “good taste” and culture to spot the true contemporary innovators when they are still unknown and we get a glimpse of them.
Maybe also, a century ago, there were not all that many places to see paintings, listen to music. To-day, the offer is so wide, it’s quite difficult to see/listen it all, and then filter out the crap. So, what do we use too often for a guide ? Listen, read, watch critics. Most of which are renowned for their hindsight. Or talented, but members of a mass media which just cannot promote innovation, least it shocks its own readership. So here goes tastefully correct self-censorship.
I do belive that some younger people have an edge here, maybe because they’re unbiased by “culture” or, worse, the bloody good taste that so often comes with the diopters if you don’t watch it.
If you love something, be it poetry, music or whatever you’ll have to work on passing it on. My son loved the sound of the concertina so two years ago we bought him one we couldn’t really afford but what can you do. A year later he squeezed out his set of polkas during the school’s St Patrick’s day party. It caught on and now over ten percent of the school population is learning the concertina.
Same goes for poetry, I bought the young fellow a lovely anthology of poetry aimed at children [Rusty Nails and Astronauts, Wolfhound Press, ISBN 0-86327-671-7, anything from little rhymes in Irish, with translation, traditional songs to Yeats, Heaney, Shakespeare and everything in between]. I started reading bits to him when he was seven and while he doesn’t like all of it, he does love some poems and he keeps coming back to it. By the time he was eight he had ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ off by heart. They are doing Speech and Drama in school and he loves reciting poetry and so do a lot of the other kids. But you’ll have to give it to them and get them going on it.
A Smile
Smiling is infectious,
You catch it like the flu.
When someone smiled at me today
I started smiling too.
I passed around the corner
And someone saw my grin.
When he smiled, I realised
I’d passed it on to him.
I thought about my smile and then
I realised it’s worth.
A single smile like mine could travel
Right around the earth.
If you feel a smile begin
Don’t leave it undetected
Let’s start an epidemic quick
And get the world infected.
Jez Alborough
I sent several poems to a magazine a few years ago, and they wrote back that they no longer print poetry. Another magazine allows only freeform poetry and Haiku. As long as I’m stuck on Common Meter I’ll never be published…and that’s okay…I can publish myself, because I like the Common Meter.
This thread churned thoughts I haven’t entertained in a while. I’m convinced part of the problem lies in the “dumbing-down” of the US education system. We teach to the lowest common denominator, rather than set a standard (not a standardized test) and encourage and equip students to reach that standard.
We no longer graduate kids who truly think, Philosophy is fast becoming a lost art. When I talk with people I’m amazed how little people think before they jabber.
We rarely see a mass-marketed truly gifted writer, composer, whatever becaose people lack the patience to dig and extract the meat from the work.
I have to combat this attitude in kids, who would rather ask me what a word means, than to reach for the dictionary that lies right in front of them!
My high school stood across the street from the local fire station, and the kids’ fascination with fire trucks apparently didn’t evaporate in high school. As is tradition for high school yearbooks, I included the following adaptation of a quote (the original author escapes me at the moment) my senior year:
“If North Qunicy High School had glass walls, the kids could see the fire engine go by without having to stand up!”
No one got it!
When real art engages it’s genius. But that’s become too much work for a lot of people.
-Tom
I’ve heard it said that there are more philosophers active today than in the whole period of recorded history up to the mid 20th century. I suspect that something comparable would be true of other areas of so-called high culture. Does this mean that at the moment there is an unrecognised Plato, Descates, Kant, Hume, and so on out there teaching reluctant undergraduates and writing great works that nobody reads? Well, not necessarily. Maybe philosphy attracts a smaller percentage of outstandingly intelligent people than it used to do. But maybe, just maybe, this is close to being an accurate picture of the situation. How would the ordinary reader with a sincere but casual interest in philosophy hope to absorb all these new ideas all at once and to evaluate them not only against the great figures of the past but against each other? And, if the people who in an earlier age would have been great philosphers are doing something else, one would expect that they would still have the same desire to express their intelligence. The genetic material must be out there.
Put bluntly, there just might not be enough kudos to go around. We might also have the impression that people are underperforming because we are suffering from information overload. Certain styles of music exist almost entirely outside the mainstream. High quality home recording is now cheap and probably (almost) within the reach of nearly all of us, not necessarily immediately but some time soon. People are free to release their own CDs and market them over the internet: musical self-publication of the kind that Walden is content with for poetry. With all of this activity, how do we attain the required perspective to pronounce our age better or worse than those that came before?
Things ain’t what they used to be.
But then, they never were.
“Things ain’t what they used to be.
But then, they never were.” -Wombat 10/14/2002
I love a good summary!
Just for the record, those Harry Potter books are quite good. I’ve got all 4 of them and have read them. They may be geared towards kids, but it isn’t dumbed-down literature.
They might be children’s books but I think they appeal to people of all ages. I know people in their 30’s who’ve read them and like them, and I suspect they’ll end up as “literature” in the same category as A Wrinkle in Time, etc and be read for years to come.
well that’s my 2 cents…
On 2002-10-14 02:14, garycrosby wrote:
That’s probably partially true but I think for most people watching TV is simply easier and more enjoyable than reading the crappy books they became accustomed to reading in school. My goodness, give people decent books to read and they will. Look at the popularity of the Harry Potter books. Virtually every kid I know has copies of them. Finally a kids author wrote some books that kids actually want to read. Given the choice between reading Potter and watching TV many kids will choose the book.
Of course the cultural purists among us argue that having all the kids reading Potter is akin to having them all eating a McDonalds or shopping at Walmart. Then again, Ms. Rawling did what America’s school system failed to do, she pried their eyes away from the TV and got them to read. The purists want them to read something more serious – something like Shakespeare. Bravo for Ms. Rawling >