Post-literate Darkness: Review Of James Marriott’s ‘The New Dark Ages’

The invention of the printing press democritised knowledge and literacy. The printing press produced books on a large scale and made knowledge and literacy easily accessible to the lower and middle classes, who were earlier denied the luxury of literacy and reading. James Marriott’s book The New Dark Ages (Penguin Random House) says that “the spread of literacy revolutionised intellectual life. Men and women from across society began to apply their literate critical intelligences to every area of human knowledge.’’

According to Marriott, we are living in a dark age of literacy where screens or screen addiction via social media platforms have replaced the book. An age when literacy is limited to the elite few and when orthodoxy, fundamentalism and irrationality reign supreme. He also calls it a ‘post-literate society’ where serious reading of newspapers and books has practically vanished. He supports this by citing the declining readership and sales of newspapers and books. Marriott sheds light on the history of reading books and how this had risen from the early 18th century to the mid-20th century. Then the arrival of television started to change the habits of people vis-à-vis popular stuff via films, news, drama, serials, etc., which involved cameras and videos.

Marriott connects the Enlightenment with the rising culture of reading books among the masses. Of course, he is aware of the fact that bad books have also been written and that during the boom of reading and literacy, Nazism and Fascism reared their heads in Europe. But he has ignored the brutalities of colonialism, which also occurred during this period, when literate people inflicted immense misery on the less literate people of Asia and Africa. “Learning to read was for slaves, not an immediate passport to freedom,” writes Alberto Manguel, “but rather a way of gaining access to one of the powerful instruments of their oppressors: the book.”

Marriott tracks the history of declining readership and the gadgets which contributed to this decline from the beginning of the 20^th century. He considers television, followed by colour television with a remote control, the first big thing which set off the decline in book and newspaper reading. In 1881, the funeral of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was attended by tens of thousands of mourners. Tolstoy’s funeral in 1910 inspired a similar demonstration of public adulation. Marriott laments the fact that today, if a writer or poet dies, only a handful of people (mostly their close friends and relatives) will attend their funeral.

Once, the working class had their own libraries, and they talked about books. The author laments that the culture of books being mass entertainers will never be the same again and that the great age of print culture was short-lived. Television favours the exterior world of sensationalism, whereas we use writing and reading to make arguments, offer explanations and present ideas.

Marriott delves into the topic of the rise of screens via mobile phones in his book. In the 1990s  or prior to that, a person embarking on a long train journey or waiting at an airport to catch a flight would read a book or newspaper, but now these have been replaced by phones, reels, videos and endless scrolling through social media apps.

Marriott writes that today’s youth has abandoned the book and embraced the ‘smart phone’. They are addicted to reels and social media and reading culture has declined at a pace never seen since the invention of the printing press. He calls it an alarming situation for the literate world and warns us about its consequences. According to him, the rise of reel//video culture has given birth to a new kind of society which is becoming irrational and orthodox. This society will eventually give rise to new dictatorships. We can see today how many populist leaders with autocratic tendencies have emerged after the internet became cheap and people stopped reading books and started spending most of their time on watching reels and videos on social media, often forwarding these videos and passing them off as ‘knowledge’.

Marriott, while quoting journalist Gideon Rachman, writes, “A personal connection between a strongman leader and his disciples is crucial for the establishment of a cult of personality…And with few exceptions, these leaders are very adept users of social media. Screens allow strongmen to get close to their followers, to appear in their lives as an everyday presence.” Thus, the decline of reading is causing a rapid decline in democratic and secular values.

For a modern student, every extra minute of concentration is a hard-won prize wrenched from the clutches of the ever-present smart phone. Marriott compares the rise of self-help book readership to that of pop culture, which is no substitute for reading serious literature, or books on history or politics.

He sees a ray of hope in banning social media for children below 16, as this will help to stop the brain rot. Ideas are power and working-class people knew that a population that doesn’t read will find itself ripe for exploitation by the wealthy and the powerful.

Marriott has not addressed the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on publishing and reading, which been rattling the literary world in recent times.

He makes a strong case for encouraging young people to read with the same or much more enthusiasm than our elders once used to. He is in favour of regulating screen time for children and young students. According to him, thousands of reels about history, politics and war can never replace the power of a single book. His deep love for literature, especially novels, shines through the pages of his book.

(Dr Ashraf Lone writes on culture, literature, politics and communalism. His deeply personal memoir on 1990s Kashmir is slated to be published)