Post-literate society

He was first here in July of twenty twenty-five talking about reading.

Today we're gonna talk about his new book, The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society.

James, welcome back to EconTalk.

Thanks so much for having me.

But no, that's not what I'm doing either.

I guess the, the f- the f- the thought behind the title comes from, um, a fairly, a fairly common idea among the sort of, the kinds of media theorists who've written about the implications of moving from a society based on literacy and reading to one that abandons literacy and reading and begins to look a little bit m- more, in some ways, like the kinds of societies that preceded the advent of literacy.

We owe Marshall McLuhan this idea that a, that a post-literate society will resemble in some ways a pre-literate society.

The things that, you know, the things I sort of, uh, say, say in my book and the things m- people like Marshall McLuhan, Walter, and Walter Ong would say is, you know, more mystical, more emotional, more face-to-face interaction, not mediated by the written word.

Do you have a book on the go? How often, if at all, do you still take time to immerse yourself in the written word? Not newspapers, subtitles and social media or even audio books, but turning the pages of an actual physical book.

Not enough of us, according to James Merritt, a Times columnist who's just released a book, obviously, called The New Dark Ages, the end of reading and the dawn of a post-literate society.

I wonder how many he's hoping to sell.

Anyway, in which he lays out the negative effects on society of declining literacy and what we can do to reverse it.

Those are three books I would recommend for anybody looking to rediscover the pleasure and richness of reading.

If you start out treating that like marathon running, you'll suddenly find that it feels like the most pleasurable thing in the world.

That's James Marriott, who's just released a book called The New Dark Age is the End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society.

And my joke about how many people will buy that is not based on the merit of the book, but just that if he's right that we're post-literate, maybe there would be many books to sell.

news.And so why would that necessarily be a negative thing?

What I argue in the piece is that we are entering a post-literate society, and that the medium that we kind of use to, to communicate with each other really does shape the way that we experience the world.

And so it's not so much that it's, it's strictly a negative always, but just that this is a really profound change that, you know, when reading and writing, you know, first appeared 6,000 years ago, that that really fundamentally changed, you know, society.

And we saw changes in how people thought and in politics and culture, and that now we can expect changes of the same magnitude and, you know, shifts in our consciousness and our politics and, and what our culture values.

It, it's, it's really a, you know, world historical phenomenon.

[pensive music]

When you say post-literate society, what, what do you mean by that versus illiterate, for example?

Right.

Yes.

And so there are 28 stories in that book, and there was the most interesting discussion yesterday when you were gone, Bill Ostrander, talking about that Atlantic Magazine article about post-literate society and people's attention spans.

It's not just young people, but people of all ages, their attention spans, the length of sentences.

Yes.

So I appreciate you bringing them up, and you've absolutely made my day because you said the words, this book changed my life.

And that is why I think people need to read.

And that hour yesterday about the literate society and post-literate society that I think you're referring to, it's so important to be able to read long sentences and hear long stories and books like the ones you've mentioned that change your life for the rest of your life.

That's awesome.

Hello and welcome to Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, literary editor for The Spectator, and this week I'm joined by the Times columnist and now author James Marriott, whose new book is The New Dark Ages, The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society.

James, that's a very alarming title and subtitle.

Are we doomed?

But yes, so that sort of, you know, it sort of reshapes your brain in all kinds of fundamental ways.

And I think gives you kinds of thought that societies without reading and writing simply don't have.

Walter Ong is a kind of really pivotal figure in this, isn't he? Because it's kind of the whole ball of wax is what a post-literate society would look like as distinct from a literate society and whether it would resemble a pre-literate society or not.

What was the kind of distinction Walter Ong made between the types of societies that relied on the oral tradition and the types of societies that suddenly had

Hello and welcome to Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, literary editor for The Spectator, and this week I'm joined by the Times columnist and now author James Marriott, whose new book is The New Dark Ages, The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society.

James, that's a very alarming title and subtitle.

Are we doomed? Yes, well, I've often said that we are.

And I think gives you kinds of thought that societies without reading and writing simply don't have.

Well...

Walter Ong is a kind of really pivotal figure in this, isn't he? Because it's kind of the whole ball of wax is what a post-literate society would look like as distinct from a literate society and whether it would resemble a pre-literate society or not.

What was the kind of distinction Walter Ong made between the types of societies that relied on the oral tradition and the types of societies that

So this actually takes us to an area that I want to explore.

Definitely more abstract, definitely more philosophical, but Two recent pieces that really have been banging around in my brain are James Marriott, a writer, had this viral essay about what he calls the post-literate society.

Derek Thompson of The Atlantic had The Decline of Thinking.

And both are pointing to this idea of declining attention spans, declining literal word count per sentences, right? There's an academic study cited that...

Yeah, very attention-grabbing.

But I listened to a podcast recently with James Marriott, who has a book out himself called The New Dark Ages, The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society.

And the stats in that about reading, more than a third of UK adults now say they've given up on reading altogether.

In the first two decades of the 21st century, reading for pleasure in the US fell by 40%.

It seems like reading is everywhere.

So how can the publishing industry be in decline? And she said that if you are not a publisher that has any of those big tentpole items, you are seeing business really, really declining.

Felicity, what do we miss by... being in a post-literate society, you know, what was the benefit of reading books that we're missing out on?

Well, from James Merriott's perspective, he'd say it's like directly linked to democracy and that, you know, reading has accompanied some of the biggest kind of political movements and upswells and revolutions and that, you know, he's actually worried that this could, you know, affect society.

So I think people are funneled into this way of thinking because they're incentivized through social media.

Which leads us on, Philip, to your book review this week of, you've reviewed James Marriott's The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society.

What did you make of this idea that we're entering a post-literate society?

Well, um, and a lot of people are going around saying, "Oh, no one's reading anything anymore." Um, and, uh, James Marriott's written this book about, uh, about how no one's reading anymore.

Um, I don't know.