The medium is the mass age

Asks this provocative essay in the British Guardian: Has the masterful narrative sweep and sheer brilliance of "The Sopranos" killed the American novel?

(The success of "The Sopranos") wouldn't be troubling were Americans reading other, actual novels. But they're not - at least not in the numbers they once did. An alarming study released in 2004 by the National Endowment for the Arts noted that in the last two decades the US has experienced a 10% drop-off in the reading of literature -- which they define as just one novel, story or play per year -- and a 28% drop in the key 18-24 age group.

In truth, the novel has been whacked by a number of things, starting with the decline of public education, where standardised tests stand in for cultural (and actual) literacy.

Emphasis mine. Regardless of the merits of the comparison between the best television series ever made and the entire corpus of the American novel, I was struck by the writer mentioning the decline of public education. Isn't that also at the base of the decline in shared American democratic values?

technorati: The Sopranos