The Printed Word in Peril
The Norman Mailer anecdote seems strange.  I think I read more than average; I finish about 30 books a year, most of which are literary fiction or history books.  Still, I haven&#x27;t read a Norman Mailer book anytime recently.  There&#x27;s literally thousands of years&#x27; worth of literature from all over the world; why him, in particular?<p>Some other things that strike me:  I agree that a phone or iPad isn&#x27;t much good for reading a novel, but I love reading on my Kindle (and the built-in dictionary makes it easier to approach foreign-language works, although I still don&#x27;t do this as often as I feel I ought to).<p>The idea that books have to compete with more stimulating technologies isn&#x27;t new either:  radio, movies, and TV were there first.  Is this a wholly new trend or the acceleration of an existing one?<p>The distraction of always-on Internet is certainly real, though, and exacerbated by smartphones.  And it is striking that even journalists and political leaders often don&#x27;t seem very well-read, particularly when you go back and look at 19th-Century rhetoric rife with allusions to the Bible or Greek myth that are opaque to much of the modern audience.