Regionalism and the Reading Class (review)

Among the grim predictions made by observers and critics of post-modernity, we find allegations of the impending murders of both the “sense of place” and the practice of reading. It cannot be long now, we are told, before globalization and information technology robs us of everything we hold dear, including our homes and our books. Residential mobility is alleged to be causing the disintegration of local community, and the Internet is implicated in the coming demise of reading for pleasure. In Regionalism and the Reading Class, Wendy Griswold addresses both these fears, and makes her own, considerably more optimistic, predictions about the futures of reading and of the sense of place that is expressed through what she calls “literary regionalism.”

Griswold’s book is organized around three main arguments. (1. That “place” will not disappear, but will continue to be re-created through practices that allow people to imagine their community, most importantly literary regionalism. (2. That reading will not disappear, but will continue to be practiced by what Griswold calls “the reading class.” (3. That these two trends are connected: the reading class will be responsible for helping to create and maintain the identities of their regions of residence through the production and consumption of regionalist literature. Griswold uses case studies from Italy, Norway and the United States to demonstrate that both collective identity and institutional support are necessary for the production of literary regionalism.

Griswold opens with a sociological introduction to the ideas of place and regional culture. She discusses the thesis that global mobility and communication have severed the link between physical space and social place. Regional literature, Griswold argues, is a particularly important form of regional culture because it is one of the most honored and institutionally supported methods of “making space into place, ‘mapping the invisible landscape’ through words and symbols.”(17) Literature can be regional aesthetically, intentionally (because it is part of a cultural movement) or institutionally (because it is marketed, distributed or criticized as such). The first chapter concludes with an analysis of the characteristics of the regional aesthetic, a feat of literary analysis as astute as Janice Radway’s identification of the plot structure of the paperback romance. Griswold identifies the classical pastoral and the modern crime novel as exemplars of the regional aesthetic.

In her second chapter, Griswold addresses the thesis that literary reading is declining in a way that will lead to its eventual disappearance. Griswold turns to histories of books and reading to show that “reading cultures” characterized by mass readership are rare, while “reading classes” (made up of educated, influential elites) have existed since the advent of writing. Using a variety of survey data, Griswold describes the contemporary American reading class. Her historical and survey data allow Griswold to predict the persistence of both reading and the reading class in the United States.

Griwold’s third chapter contains the heart of her argument: both literary reading generally, and literary regionalism in particular, are and will continue to be maintained by the reading class, who will use their cultural influence to promote both reading and regionalism as esteemable practices. Using the unique Survey2000 data collected by James Witte and the National Geographic, Griswold is able to compare “movers” and “stayers” on their general literary knowledge and their knowledge of regional literature. Griswold’s evidence contradicts expectations that residentially-mobile “movers” will be “cosmopolitans” – who know more about literature generally, but are ignorant of the regional literature of their current homes – compared to the “stayers” who have lived in their current regions since birth. Instead, Griswold characterizes her “movers” as “cowbirds” who move into a new region and make themselves at home, quickly catching up to the “stayers” in their knowledge of local literature. Instead of destroying regional culture, residential mobility has the potential to reinforce it, by giving a “mover” the incentive to use regional literature to make his or her new residence a home.

Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate the necessity of both intention and institution to...