Academy Of Ideas

From the Battle of Ideas 2015 When Roland Barthes infamously declared ‘the death of the author’ in 1967, he also intended it as a celebration of ‘the birth of the reader’. And while literacy campaigners continue to fight the Reading Wars over literacy rates, by most measures reading is in a healthier state than ever. Polls indicate the number of Americans reading books has doubled since the 1950s, and reading is increasing among under-30s, while sales of printed books are proving remarkably robust in competition with e-books. The announcement that Harper Lee would be publishing her sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird generated a storm of international media interest, as did Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he was launching his own online book club with 31 million members. Meanwhile, that once-seemingly doomed literary form, the essay, seems to have enjoyed a resurgence, as new media embraces the ‘long-read’ and serious literary journals and small publishers continue to thrive rather than face ex