I did not mention in my post of 2 October on post-apocalyptic fiction Walter Tevis’ excellent novel Mockingbird (1980) as I started reading it right after writing the piece. It refuses to be consigned to my memory without further ado, so here we go.

As it happened to me, the name Walter Tevis may be familiar if you’re around my age (49) in relation to two film adaptations of his novels: The Hustler (novel 1959, film with Paul Newman 1961) and its sequel The Colour of Money (novel 1984, film 1986–again with Newman and a young Tom Cruise). I was very much surprised to see that this Tevis is the same Tevis of not only this SF masterpiece but also of another SF peculiar novel, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963); its 1976 adaptation by Nicolas Roeg with the charismatic singer/actor David Bowie as its protagonist, in the role of an alien visitor, is one of those cult films which re-surfaces again and again.

Tevis (1928-1984) was a teacher of English literature and creative writing at Ohio University (Athens, 1965 to 1978). As he explained, the inspiration for Mockingbird came from the realisation that his students did not care for reading. Hence, he imagined a strange post-apocalyptic 25th century American civilization in which all human beings are illiterate. The situation is strange, I’m claiming, because individuals choose of their own accord to abandon reading progressively; ironically, as literacy decays technoscience evolves fast enough to produce efficient robots that take over from humans not only the most onerous tasks but also the running of civilization itself. The most advanced robotic model, Make Nine, has been designed to manage complex organizations and–you may start chuckling now…–Spofforth, the android protagonist, happens to be the Dean of New York University.

The other post-apocalyptic novels I mentioned, including the one I’m currently reading (Alas, Babylon! by Pat Frank) are quite upsetting as they show how defenceless we, the common people, are in the face of accidental or purposeful destruction, whether this is caused by a plague or by a nuclear holocaust. What is most terrifying about Mockingbird is that there is no catastrophe but a progressive erosion of the interest in the written word, and, accordingly, of civilization (as Tevis knew it). This erosion is supposed to have started by the mid 1970s, when, as I have noted, Tevis was an English teacher–which shows that Literature teachers have been worrying about falling literacy standards for a long time… In Tevis’ 25th century New York not even university teachers are literate (the scant education offered depends on audio-visual media). The plot simply concerns android Spofforth’s decision to help a male teacher, Bentley, to teach himself to read and, later, educate the spunky heroine, Mary Lou, with the aim of giving humanity a chance to regenerate itself.

Human beings can survive in a state of illiteracy; indeed, along history most people were illiterate, with literacy spreading recently mainly due to the needs of the Industrial Revolution (complex machinery cannot be operated without written instructions), with a push from Protestantism, for which Bible reading is essential. As I commented in my post of 2 October George Stewart’s post-apocalyptic novel Earth Abides deals with how the surviving generation fails to educate its children and how, nonetheless, the younger people do go on to establish a new life similar to that of primitive tribes. What is at stake is not, then, survival itself but a much feared drawback into a darker age and the ensuing loss of our collective memory. The inability to read and write means an inability to connect with the past, logically, whether this refers to History or to the achievements in science and technology. In Tevis’ novel technology thrives as human beings become mentally numb, yet it is a technology with an absurd self-serving purpose and totally unable to connect with human needs (with the exception of the melancholic Spofforth).

Obviously, the reason why Mockingbird has impressed me so much, apart from its overlooked literary quality, is the central concept–the idea that individuals can choose not to read, therefore, not to be educated. We all know there was never a golden age when everyone read and very keenly so; yet, the Enlightenment promised to bring forth a civilization in which not only would all human beings have access to education but all would demand it. The central idea was, remember, to guarantee the rights of men (and of women as, later, Mary Wollstonecraft demanded). Almost 300 years later we have proof positive that many persons just do not want to be educated, which is not only puzzling but also a tragedy. The Victorians insisted very much on the idea of self-improvement and proceeded, besides, to place education in the hands of the Government, which was then a very novel idea. I am personally of the persuasion that a day when I have learned nothing new is a day wasted, and even though I do learn much from audio-visual media, nothing can replace reading.

And I mean by this, not just reading short texts but, most essentially, books. This is what my colleagues and I see these days in our university classrooms: students do not buy books, they do not bring the required set texts to class, they do not borrow them from the library. The overall impression if you read the press is that the book market is slowly dying; I’m told that most novels sell 400 copies and that successful novels sell just above 2,000. This is nothing in a country of 47 million people. The person in charge of purchasing books for our excellent Humanities library tells me that borrowing has dramatically decreased–I know, for I can get anything I need with no fear that someone else will have the book. So, yes, literacy persists as the social networks depend very much on the written word but the ability to read for long is on the wane, reduced to short pieces, with books looking impossibly long. At least, that’s my impression.

Walter Tevis, remember, had a similar impression when the internet was still firmly in the hands of a military clique and nobody had dreamed of its being a most important resource for interpersonal global communication. The internet per se is not an enemy of literacy–what am I doing here but use it to publish texts? What seems to be the main enemy is the generalized perception that reading is an optional pursuit, when it is actually the basis of all (post-tribal) civilization. Just imagine what kind of medicine we will have in the future in the hands of doctors who do not want to read. For, in the end, what matters is not quite whether Charles Dickens’ immortality is guaranteed (just to name someone I love) but whether we can maintain the living standards to which we are used for long. Don’t tell me now that the existence of nuclear weapons contradicts my argument as they are also a product of advanced education. Think, rather, of how the knowledge that sustains the comforts of our daily lives can be transmitted without the support of books and of interested readers. It can not.

Yes, we Literature teachers always complaining about the same, what a bore we are… I’ll add, just in case, that having finally seen this week the BBC’s wonderful 2005 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, I am even more convinced of the pernicious impact that the current fad to call TV series the 21st century equivalent of the 19th century novel is having. For, no matter how good the BBC’s Bleak House was, its 510 minutes can by no means replace the much richer experience of reading the book. And not even the best-written TV series compares to the best-written novel.

This is just in case we go the way of Tevis’ professor Bentley and end up teaching audio-visual texts to illiterate students being ourselves also illiterate. Some nightmare…

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