Culture, nihilism and the market

Peter Carey’s recent comments about the fate of books and reading on Q and A and at the Sydney Writers’ festival provoked an enormous amount of vitriol on the part of right-wing pundits across the country. This in itself marked a shift. Not so long ago one would have expected claims about the importance of ‘high culture’ to have been mocked by elements of the postmodernist Left. Instead Carey’s suggestions that people read less than they used to, that the novel was in crisis, and that reading habits were dumbed-down, were dismissed as elitist and arrogant by the Right. Andrew Bolt and Miranda Devine had a go at Carey but Gerard Henderson went furthest arguing that as well as being a snob Carey was simply wrong. More people were reading than ever. His evidence? Literacy rates were rising.