Review: The New Dark Ages by James Marriott

Speaking about television in an interview conducted ten years before the launch of the iPhone, David Foster Wallace put it like this:

The technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it's gonna get easier and easier, more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but [who] want our money. Which is all right. In low doses, right? But if that's the basic main staple of your diet, you're gonna die. In a meaningful way, you're going to die.

Scrolling on Intagram last night (ironic, I know), I saw a clip of Maisie Peters saying her "hot take" is that there is no literacy crisis because she sees even more people reading than ever—especially because of romantasy! It made me so angry I closed the app. But then I realized I was being unfair because there is a deceptive statistic that led her, and is leading many others, to come to that false conclusion.

More books are being purchased than ever before. That is a true statement. But fewer people are reading than ever before. That is the more revealing statement.

In 2025, 19% of US adult citizens accounted for 82% of books read. In fact, the top 4% accounted for 46% of books read. THOSE ARE INSANE STATISTICS. So no, Maisie Peters, there are not more people reading than ever. Perhaps people who are reading are reading more than ever. But that does not solve our immense literacy problem. (To be fair she is from the UK not US, but 40% of their population hasn't read a book in the past year either, which is the same stat as the US).

While The New Dark Ages does its best to boil down these statistics to identify their root cause and what effect they're having on society, it's an impossible task so soon into the phenomenon. Many interesting points are raised, but none have quite enough depth to feel fully illuminating. Nonetheless, I highly enjoyed dipping into the evolution of books, television, politics, and many other aspects of media history, but by the end it feels like Marriott is still holding the mic.