The Writing On The Wall: On Reading, Writing and The Decline of the Novel
I’ve been an avid reader most of my life and make a careful distinction between reading nonfiction and reading fiction. Current nonfiction offers me crisp information, data, and analytical substance from which I can draw conclusions. With nonfiction, I add to my knowledge base.
The novel, however, is quite different. The novel is a gift. The novel gives me the experience of having visited another world, and even though it’s fiction, its premise is grounded in a larger truth. I meet characters who are unlike me, or maybe they are very much like me. I have come to know many types of people I would not have known had I not read the stories of their lives; and as I came to understand them, I felt compassion.
I am grateful for the many novels I have read, and I adore the authors who have written them. Some books are better than others, but every book I have read has become part of me. A Seattle bookseller, John Siscoe, once told me, “There is no such thing as a bad book,” and I believe he’s right.
I remember what it is like to fall so in love with a book that my life was changed in immeasurable ways. “Green Mansions,” by W.H. Hudson, is a seemingly unlikely story to transform the life of a child, but there I was traveling with a young man “Abel” who had embarked on an adventure in the wild, uncharted jungles of Guyana. The land was inhabited by lush forests, mountains and rivers that were pristine, untouched. Wild animals never before seen appeared within the infinite walls of the “green mansions.”
The most magnificent being of all is the beautiful and wild Rima, a young woman who speaks in a strange, lilting language only known to birds and her lost tribe. While Abel’s journey is fraught with peril: gold hunting, warring bands of native tribes, petty rivalries, superstition, and magic, he becomes forever smitten with Rima.
My childish response to the glorious Rima put me squarely on the path to becoming a bird woman in the jungle. I practiced bird calls in the small woods beside my home and explored abandoned trails along the aqueduct behind Untermyer Park in Yonkers. I thought I was a bird woman like Rima and fashioned my hair in a tangled nest of curls. I acquired the ability to whistle profusely, albeit street whistles, and made singsong calls, keening sounds that scared other kids.
Rima the bird woman transformed my life and made me want to become a writer. There isn’t anything scarier than a weird child wanting to write books. I added a hooting sound to my repertoire of bird language. I like to think that reading “Green Mansions” when I was ten made me become a slightly better person. At the very least, I became talented at uttering fantastic bird calls.
Novels enrich our lives because we touch the fragile threads of the diverse fabrics that weave us together. We begin to see the connections in things and become spellbound by the certainty that no one person is on this earth alone. All of us are slogging through the muck and the mire, navigating the joy, the sorrow, the grief, and the pratfalls that throw us haphazardly off course only to be consumed by a reckless wind. A good novel teaches us that it is noble to be a human being.
A much different novel transformed my life as a young woman. “The World is Made of Glass” by Morris L. West seduced me into believing that no human being, no matter how evil, is beyond hope. The Australian Author Morris West also wrote “The Shoes of the Fisherman,” about intrigue at the Vatican when the cardinals gather to elect a new pope. Morris West had a flair for telling stories that explored redemption.
In “The World is Made of Glass,” Magda is a brilliant medical doctor and a wealthy society diva, but she is also a sociopath who murdered her best friend and stole her husband. While Magda’s strength is over-the-top, she is also entirely credible as a woman who wants to develop compassion and a conscience but is clueless as to how to begin the journey to get there.
To have this powerful woman seek help from the father of modern psychoanalysis, Carl Jung, seems improbable, but the way the story is told makes the reader have a deep understanding and awareness for these two characters' humanity and the existential pain we all face as human beings that is inherent in the human condition.
I read the novel three times. I wanted to understand what caused a human being to lack a conscience. I wanted to know why there are people in this world who lack empathy for other human beings. I wanted to know why some people are willing to lie, steal, cheat, and even kill to get what they want. I wanted to understand the nature of evil. And while I’m still pondering these issues today, I have come to know that even the most damaged human beings among us can still undergo a transformation that allows them to embrace the soul of humanity.
The oddest book to captivate my attention is by Willa Cather. I read her novel “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” shortly after I returned from a trip to New Mexico. The unlikely pairing of two men who happen to be Catholic Priests is far afield from my life experience, but I could not help but be moved by their journey that began when they were very young men in France.
Now as missionaries in New Mexico, their journeys are intertwined, but often quite separate, too. Father Latour aims to build a mighty cathedral in this wild country, where the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Sandias loom above the painted desert that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving. Father Valliant seeks his own metaphorical cathedral by ministering to the people, Native Americans, Mexicans, and all of those who have traveled west to the new frontier, to give them faith where little is to be had.
Willa Cather conjured New Mexico as a dream that turns out to be true. Ochre and yellow, half shades of green lay between the sea and groves of olives, old, old tamarisks, and the rainbow flowers of quivering blood-red tubes. “Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.”
The beauty found in novels both astonishes and confounds me. I am perpetually surprised by travelling to new worlds, without having to navigate an airport. I can’t read enough in a day to satisfy my craving for the temporal beauty that a good novel provides. So, it distresses me to see so many people who do not read. I travel frequently by plane and train. Few people have a book in hand, but plenty are fixated on their not-so-smart-phones. On a recent flight from Denver to Seattle, I sat next to a young woman who spent the entire time looking at photos of herself. She is not an extreme case. The world is indeed made of glass.
The number of people reading novels has dropped precipitously. There was a slight increase in people reading novels during the pandemic. Two years later, a national endowment for the arts survey revealed that fewer than half of American adults read more than one book in 2022. Based on the results of that survey, there is every indication that since 2022 a large number of American adults have not read a single book in a year.
Dire reports abound about the decline in reading. An August, 2025 article in The Guardian noted that reading for fun in the U.S. has fallen by forty percent. This data was based on research conducted by the University of Florida and University College London. Between 2003 and 2023, daily reading, for reasons other than work and study, fell by about 3% each year. The definition of reading encompassed more than books, and included magazines and newspapers in print, digital or audio. Example to wit, the young woman on the plane who exhibited insatiable lust looking at her selfies.
High School reading skills have plummeted to a new low. An October, 2025 article in the New York Times stated, “New national testing data, reported in September, shows that the reading skills of American high school seniors are the worst they have been in three decades. A third of the 12th graders who were tested did not have basic reading skills.” One expert explained the decline in reading was due to the pandemic and increased use of screen time, but that is not entirely true.
The reading rate among high school students has been on the decline for years. One private school librarian, Kathy Johnson, told me twelve years ago that she had observed a marked decline in high school students wanting to read. Evan Frankl, a librarian at the New York Public Library in Bronxville, commented that my first novel in The Yonkers Trilogywas too long for young adults. “At almost 450 pages, 50+ pages could easily be cut without affecting the story or its feel. Attracting a younger audience to this book would not be difficult - getting them to finish the book might be.”
The use of smartphones takes time away from other activities, especially reading. Reading habitually is a trait acquired by practice. If a person is not in the habit of reading, of living the “reading life,” then having to plod through a book is achingly dull. It’s no wonder that both children and adults are reading fewer books than in the past.
The drumbeat marking the decline of reading takes on a more dangerous rhythm when experts assert that we have entered “The Dawn of a Post-literate Society.” New York Times Columnist James Marriott writes about society, ideas and the pervading cultural issues of our times. He notes how the world as we once knew it was forged during the reading revolution, and argues that we are now living through a counter-revolution—books are dying.
Marriott asserts that “the screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history.” The ramifications of fewer people reading has a direct impact on American Democracy. The literacy level in the U.S. is estimated to be about 79%, ranking 36th globally. Declining literacy does not bode well for the future of Democracy, in which citizens must be able to make informed, intelligent decisions that are essential to participate in elections.
Amid gloom and doom, there is a glimmer of a silver lining. Not all reading is in decline. The 2022 national endowment for the arts survey revealed that there was an uptick in readership covering books about science and technology. This nonfiction category showed an increase from 12.9% in 2017 to 13.5% in 2022. Science and Technology is also the only category in which men showed greater participation than women (14.9% v. 12.2%). Graphic novels also held a steady readership among both men and women.
Readers who prefer books about science and technology eagerly await the annual list of titles curated by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. While he recommends mostly nonfiction and memoir, a few books that make his list are novels. Another pundit recommending books is popular science author and psychologist Steven Pinker. Of the 75+ books on Pinker’s list, the great majority are nonfiction. Of the fifteen novels he recommends, four were written by his wife, Rebecca Goldstein.
You’ve heard of all the usual tropes explaining why people should read novels: Books open new worlds. Books are a portal into the past. Books open new windows into the future. Books allow you to meet people of a different race, ethnicity, gender, age, and sex. Books connect the dots. Books teach us compassion. Books save lives.
In my wildest imaginings, I cannot envision government control over what we read and write, a world where AI-generated memes dictate what we see, read, hear and think. Too many people are unruly, smart, rebellious, and unwilling to settle for a reality that is not of their own making. The writing on the wall is clear: people will never abandon books.
The greatest advocates for the novel are writers. Many novelists don’t write to capture an audience, and they don’t write merely to please themselves. Authors write novels because a story demands to be told. W.H. Hudson’s quest to write “Green Mansions” came to symbolize the attainment of perfect love and beauty in life—that is futile, yet accomplished. His pursuit of the natural beauty of the jungle is all that mattered.
Likewise, Magda in “The World is Made of Glass” seeks help from Carl Jung because she has fallen into a black hole of living a life with no meaning. Ironically, after Jung dismisses her as a patient, as someone he cannot help, she embarks on her own journey and is able to find redemption.
In “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” the friendship between the two priests seeps powerfully into our consciousness and wins our heart and soul. This tender novel shows us what love is without ever once mentioning the word.
The three novels I have noted here are not on any pundit’s top-books-lists, nor have they ever been on the New York Times Bestsellers List. Yet, in all of these novels, the beauty of humanity triumphs over injustice in a profound story of love. The ultimate victory of humanity reminds us there is no power on earth—technology, AI, war, governments—that will stop a person from becoming a gifted storyteller. And there is also no power on earth that will stop people from reading great novels.
LINKS:
Publishers Weekly, NEA Finds Worrying Drop in Reading Participation by Jim Milliot, Nov 3, 2023
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/93659-nea-finds-worrying-drop-in-reading participation.html#:~:text=The%20NEA's%20%E2%80%9CArts%20Participation%20Patterns,four%20percentage%20points%20from%202017
The Guardian, ‘Deeply concerning’: reading for fun in the US has fallen by 40%, new study says, by Benjamin Lee, Aug 20, 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/20/reading-for-pleasure-study
New York Times, High School Reading Skills Are at a New Low. What Does That Mean for Young People?, by Natalie Proulx, Oct 23, 2025
J.Marriot.substack, The dawn of the post-literate society And the end of civilization by James Mariott, Sept 18, 2025
https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-literate-society-aa1
The National Literacy Institute, 2025 Literacy Statistics
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics
Book Reviews:
Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson
The World is Made of Glass by Morris L. West
Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather
About Patricia Vaccarino
Patricia Vaccarino retired from her P.R. practice in 2018, but still publishes a digital magazine (pro-bono) that is going into its 14th year. She has written award-winning film scripts, press materials, content, essays, articles, book reviews, andten books, including the Yonkers Trilogy, and several nonfiction works, including The Death of a Library: An American Tragedy. Her latest novel, Maya Darling, will be published January, 2027. She is represented by the literary agent Malaga Baldi.
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Contact: patriciavaccarino@gmail.com +1-206-979-3380
Patricia Vaccarino
Patricia Vaccarino is an accomplished writer who has written award-winning film scripts, press materials, articles, essays, speeches, web content, marketing collateral, and eleven books.