Through the proliferation of digital media, the practice of reading has found new life. A recent New Yorker article profiled James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble and Waterstones (UK), who can best be described as an optimistic contrarian. The Atlantic declared that “The Age of Reading is Over”. Reader’s Digest said that a “reader’s slump” is imminent, and is trending in the direction that many have feared. Daunt, however, took Waterstones in 2011 from the brink of bankruptcy into a UK conglomerate. He does not seem to be worried.
Since this profile was released on Monday, and since it has received a remarkable amount of buzz, I have been troubled as to why this piece would be written in the first place. It is fair for the CEO of a literary conglomerate to be optimistic about the state of his business in an industry that is, after all, about to grow five percent annually for the foreseeable future. It is fair for a 26-year-old Cambridge graduate in the ‘90s to think that reading was becoming a global industry in the age of considerable globalization. They are presented as contrarian opinions, and yet, to Daunt, they were nothing more than common sense.
If this rise in digital media, in literature can be narrowed down to one topic, it is that of noticing what we have missed. Literary newsletter writers consolidate sources from interviews you missed as a child, books you never got around to, quotes from your favorite actors that never made their way across your desk. Narrative non-fiction bestsellers (here and here) thrive only when they survive in their niche event, their niche audience that broadens your horizons with an inch of surprise.
The latest of this trend, a documentary titled You Can See Everything, has only built upon this insecurity by informing us that, in fact, we cannot see everything. Even if we are familiar with the story, the actor, the business, even if it was us, even if we were defrauded out of millions of dollars, we may not be able to understand what happened to us.
There are few that left YCSE content with the knowledge they just gained. Sure, they were granted access into the life of an infamous cultural figure, but they may never know what it was like between Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder. Just like they may never know why it actually was that Daunt opened his first bookstore in the ‘90s. I understand, however. I also did not know, until Tuesday, that Barnes & Noble is owned by Elliott Investment Management, a hedge fund headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida.
It was not long ago that Barnes & Noble, amidst the decline of independent booksellers in the 1990’s, was declared the “Evil Empire” of the business. Just years before, however, the New Yorker was considered the ultimate velvet rope for literary writers, a monopoly of high-end literary validation that, while silenced, has very much permeated its reputation. Cultural authority allows for rebrands, but very rarely does it allow for its customers to forget. It seems that times have changed.
The numbers themselves are optimistic. Bookstores are places of culture, gathering places, hubs for conversation and coffee and meetups that were much different than the Toys-R-Us’ they were converted from years ago. Page-to-screen adaptations are still as, if not more prominent than they were in the age of content circulation. Daunt did fundamentally restructure Barnes & Noble by ending the practice of taking publisher money for front-table placements.
It is almost too hard to tell. When restaurants proclaimed that in-person dining was back after their hiatus in 2020, there was plenty of food left on the table. When magazines proclaim that the era of reading is back to an ivory tower of readers who disdain the times they find themselves in. The optimism in the wake of Daunt’s profile is surely to be expected not only from him, but from the New Yorker as well. It is also readily consumed by those for whom it is contrarian enough to be worth consuming.
When Daunt smiles, his friend says, “his face disappears into his eyes, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Not that he looks like a cloud - but he’s otherwise quite hard to read.” But, even then, I think he might say something different. I know there are days when it’s hard to tell if the sun is coming out.