The Death of the Reader?

I'm delighted that my response to an article by James Marriott has been published by the Scottish Union for Education. 

Summary

Last month I attended a book event at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. Two authors, Kat Hill and Kristie De Garis, were there to discuss their new nature writing books. The event followed the usual format—interview, reading, Q&A—except for one thing: neither author read from their work. Instead, they talked about representation: how few female nature writers there are, how few black nature writers, how few working-class writers. The words themselves seemed almost incidental.

This got me thinking about James Marriott's recent essay arguing we're living through a post-literate revolution. Smartphones have destroyed our attention spans; students can't read Dickens anymore; democracy itself is at risk. It's a frightening diagnosis. But here's the thing: Scottish book festivals are reporting record attendance. People are still turning up for books. So what's really going on?

I think there are two types of post-literacy emerging. The first is technological—people who can't sustain attention, whose cognitive architecture has been rewired by screens. The second is ideological—people who can read perfectly well but won't engage with anything that might "trigger" them or doesn't announce its political credentials upfront. At Blackwell's in Oxford, I watched a student reject book after book: "racist," "homophobic," "fascist." Finally, she found one "without trouble."

Both rob us of our inheritance, but the second may be more insidious because it's self-inflicted. We're not the barbarians at the gates; we're the librarians trashing our own collections. The question before us is not whether we can read; but whether we dare to.

I've written about this at length for the Scottish Union for Education. You can read the full piece here: [The Death of the Reader? - Scottish Union for Education Newsletter](https://open.substack.com/pub/scottishunionforeducation/p/scottish-union-for-education-newsletter-dde)