the national attention span grows, or, Part Deux

I hesitate to write about this for fear that I will jinx what looks like a growing trend of … seriousness … in our culture, but I’m ready to pass on to you some good news for once and I don’t want to lose the opportunity.

First, a recent poll indicated that, unusually, Americans are following the 2008 presidential campaign even though they will have to continue following it for another 20 months in order to find out what happens.

[[Yes, that's how Americans are following the campaign: as a horse race, or a grand sporting event, or a soap opera---in installments. Don't laugh, but John F. Kennedy, Jr., never got the credit he deserved for reaching this insight before almost anyone else: that his generation can be made to follow politics (which they were notoriously uninterested in during the go-go Clinton years) if you present it to them as the greatest show on earth. That was the animating idea (in 1995) behind his magazine, George. ***]]

Now there is even more evidence that our population might be more attentive than it has been credit for. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says that the reports of the demise of reading may have been greatly exaggerated:

Teens buying books at fastest rate in decades

New ‘golden age of young adult literature’ declared

…

“Kids are buying books in quantities we’ve never seen before,” said Booklist magazine critic Michael Cart, a leading authority on young adult literature. “And publishers are courting young adults in ways we haven’t seen since the 1940s.”Credit a bulging teen population, a surge of global talent and perhaps a bit of Harry Potter afterglow as the preteen Muggles of yesteryear carry an ingrained reading habit into later adolescence.

Not only are teen book sales booming — up by a quarter between 1999 and 2005, by one industry analysis — but the quality is soaring as well. Older teens in particular are enjoying a surge of sophisticated fare as young adult literature becomes a global phenomenon.

All of which leads Cart to declare, “We are right smack-dab in the new golden age of young adult literature.”

The piece underscores that the teenagers’ interest in books has surged as the books themselves widen their scope to include serious (”adult”) themes and issues:

Fantasy and graphic novels are especially hot, and adventure, romance, humor and gritty coming-of-age tales remain perennial favorites. In addition, racy series such as “The Gossip Girls” — often likened to a teen “Sex and the City” — have created a buzz.

More notably, though, there’s a new strain of sophistication and literary heft as publishers cater to the older end of the spectrum with books that straddle teen and adult markets.

King County librarian Holly Koelling has been tracking these trends as she writes an upcoming edition of “Best Books for Young Adults,” an American Library Association reference book.

“There has been an increase in the age of the protagonist, the complexity of the plotting and the content — the gravity of the content,” Koelling said. “I think it may be a reflection of a more sophisticated teenage population.” [e.a. See also Steven Johnson's Everything That's Bad Is Good for You, in which he similarly argues that audiences who eagerly follow the complex plots and multiple storylines of TV series like, say, The Sopranos are indicative of a smart, attentive audience, not a "dumb and dumber" one.]

The trend may also reflect more sophisticated parents, and a more “sophisticated”–not to mention more realistic—society: one in which there’s no such thing as forbidden books, ideas, and subjects, even if they are controversial.

(Or perhaps especially if they’re controversial. Because controversy sparks thinking and debate. And a democratic society needs thinking people and healthy debate in order to remain democratic. And it’s never too early to get people to start thinking.)

So let’s follow this “trend” together: Has the “dumb” and “dumber” trend reached a plateau? Is America becoming “smart and smarter”?

———-

*** In 1999, after JFK Jr.’s death, Anthony York wrote in Salon:

The four-year-old political mag is Kennedy’s legacy. After a well-publicized wrestling match with the New York State Bar exam, and a brief stint as a Manhattan prosecutor, Kennedy left his law career behind to found George, and he gave it the tagline, “not politics as usual.” When asked about its mission, he often riffed that politics was the greatest show on earth, and he wanted a magazine that covered politics the way Sports Illustrated covered sports.

George covered politics, Kennedy-style, with a heavy dose of glamor and celebrity. It made sense for a man born in the public eye, whose every developmental stage, since birth, has been captured by the cameras. The fusion of celebrity and politics defined George, from the first issue which featured Cindy Crawford cross-dressed as a midriff-baring George Washington (the magazine’s namesake)on the cover, to the most recent, dated August 1999, the political humor issue, featuring actor Ben Stiller.

“Clearly, he was not editing this magazine for people who knew a lot about politics,” said Edward Klein, former editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine and author of several best-selling Kennedy biographies. “It was an effort to reach audiences who needed politics to be sugar-coated with pop culture — and he being the greatest pop culture figure of them all.”