What Is America Reading?
The reading of a nation determines
its thought and is an indication of
its trend.-—-The book stores and
the news stands exhibit examples
of America’s taste in reading.—--
Can anything be done to curb the
enormous demand for trashy and
immoral literature? --- An in-
valuable standard as
to what to read
By Arthur Monroe
HANHARDT
HAT is America reading?”’
asked the writer of an
article in the Munich
Illustrated Press recently.
He then answered his
own question by stating
that the American takes his reading
material for the greater part from
newspapers and magazines. He
praised the grand array of periodi-
cals, literary and political, and of
newspapers with their great variety
of sections, and observed that the
thousands of enormous editions of
dailies, weeklies, monthlies, and
quarterlies bore witness.to a great
reading public; but this periodical
reading is all at the expense of the
book.
The question is vital: What is
America — what is the world in
general — reading? An answer will reveal much.
To answer this question in detail would necessitate
the discussion of an endless amount of printed matter.
Suffice it to say, there are as many journals as there
are fields of human interest. One need but think of
the better classes of magazines — the quarterly
reviews, the literary monthlies, the political and
news weeklies and monthlies. Then there are the
large conservative dailies, and also the scientific,
commercial, travel, and geographical publications.
Then there is the colossal mass of light reading—
the story magazines that feature detectives, crimin-
als, love affairs, and so on. The number of joke
journals has increased rapidly, as have also those
featuring nude pictures under the pretense of
fostering physical culture.
This brief survey gives a faint idea of what is
being read, and the book — of the making of which
PAGE TEN
H. Armstrong Roberts
What is read to them and what they read has much to
do in deciding their future and the future of the nation
there is no end—has not yet even been mentioned.
All over the world we are living in the age of the
movie, newspaper, magazine, cheap book, radio,
talkie. Every one is reading and hearing — looking
at and listening in.
We are also living in an age of speed and enlighten-
ment; even though the latter must be imbibed on
the go. The psychological effect of traveling at the
rate of one hundred miles an hour has also been felt
in the world of reading. Everything has become short.
Short stories, short paragraphs, short news notes,
short pithy headlines and lead sentences. ‘ Short
and snappy’ ’is the catch phrase —he that runs wants
also to read.
The boy who plays about the street, who goes to
the cinema, who tinkers with a radio, will also be
able to tell you the make of the passing automobile
and will, perhaps, be able to give a salesman’s talk on
THE WATCHMAN MAGAZINE