By John Bingham)
Reading has become a “specialist activity” which only a minority enjoy regularly, rather than something most people do routinely, according to the novelist Ruth Rendell.
The 83-year-old crime writer and peer said that the dawning realisation that reading for pleasure is no longer an everyday pastime to most people was something that “strikes terror” into her heart.
She said that despite claims that the publishing industry is in good health, it is now possible to “see” the decline of literature in national life.
The Man Booker-nominated novelist Philip Hensher agreed, adding that unlike even 20 years ago, most people no longer feel “ashamed” to say that they never read fiction.
Baroness Rendell’s remark came as she discussed the surprise success of the novel Stoner, the account of a how a young man fell in love with literature, which was named as Waterstones Book of the Year in 2013 – half a century after it flopped on publication.
First published in 1965, the book by John Williams, an academic, was almost forgotten but forced its way back into print last year after word of mouth recommendations which led to a series of celebrity endorsements.
It tells the story of how Stoner, an unassuming scholar, first fell in love with literature as a young man after reading a Shakespeare sonnet forced him to confront his own ignorance of the written word.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s arts programme Front Row, she suggested that the reason the book had become such a surprise success was that reading has become alien to many people, like Stoner before his epiphany.
“Perhaps it is more apposite, it is more needful today than it was then because now we can see this happening,” she said.
“We are told that it isn’t happening but it is – that reading is no longer something that everybody does as a matter of course.
“Reading is becoming a kind of specialist activity and that strikes terror into the heart of people who love reading.”
Hensher, whose works include The Northern Clemency, told The Telegraph: “I can see that that’s the direction that it is going in.
“Obviously millions of people read books every year but for the first time it is being treated as if it were a minority activity.
“The BBC devotes hour upon hours to things like Crown Green Bowling but it has no books programme [on television].
“You can see that people don’t see the necessity to read, they are not ashamed that they don’t read.
“I said in an interview once that you can genuinely tell when you meet a person if they never read a novel: that there is something missing there.
“People were outraged that I even suggested such a thing.
“I think that she is right, that it is going in that direction and people who do read a lot perhaps are starting to think of themselves as undertaking a particular activity that is worthy of celebrating the way Stoner was rather than the way it was even 20 years ago, as something that everybody did in a routine way.
“The thing that makes me think that it is on the decline is that it is quite common now to get on public transport in the evening and not see anybody reading a book and probably 20 years ago half of the people in the carriage might have been.”
Julian Barnes, an admirer of Stoner, agreed that part of the reason for its success was that many people had a similar experience.
He told Front Row: “The key moment in the book is in the first chapter when Stoner, who has come from a rural background and is studying agriculture, has to take an English class and he is given Shakespeare’s 73rd sonnet to read.
“And he is asked what it means and he can’t answer: he can only say ‘it means – it means’ and yet something has happened within him.
“It is not that he has understood, it is almost that he has an epiphany because he hasn’t understood but he knows that if he can understand he will understand literature and if he understands literature he will understand the world.
“That is Stoner’s epiphany and that is an epiphany that many, many readers have.”
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