The University's Post-Book Future

Students don't want to read novels anymore. I've filled my English-lit syllabus with movies to help them learn anyway.

- Gregor Campbell

I'VE BEEN TEACHING English at the University of Guelph since the '90s.

Every four years, it's like an entire generation has turned over. I'm used to feeling like what once worked in the classroom is suddenly completely out of date. But it's worse now. One of the books I teach is Hard Times by Charles Dickens. When students begin their seminar presentations, I often ask, "How many of you actually read the book?" Only a masochist would say "no" out loud. But there's a vibe in the room: everyone's having trouble keeping up with the readings. And not just Dickens.

In my American literature course last year, I put William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury on the syllabus. When I encountered Faulkner's novels for the first time at Dalhousie University many years ago, I was transfixed by his sentences. Yet my TA and I estimate that only three students in my American lit class of 75 finished it. The same thing happened with Virginia Woolf. Recently, I broke the ice and asked them directly, "What gives? Why is no one reading?" One responded: "I'm bombarded with fast-paced videos on Instagram and YouTube, and I have serious trouble reading print because the books blur into each other in my mind." Another said, "To The Lighthouse, and Woolf in general, demand heavy patience. It can feel impossible to summon that in a world full of notifications."