On Monday of this week, the author Robert B. Parker passed away. This death hits me hard because Parker’s most famous creation was a character named Spenser, a wise-cracking Boston detective equally at home bench-pressing 300 pounds and punching out bad guys, or cooking gourmet meals and contemplating Hawthorne and Kant. Growing up, I loved Spenser because I wanted to be Spenser - a tough guy who also loved to read, who was in a committed relationship with a complicated woman he adored, who did things according to his own uncompromising moral code.

Of the nearly 40 published Spenser novels, I must’ve read 30. When I was in high school, I spent whole summers reading them. Also, whole summers (and weekends) reading Tolkien and other fantasy writers like Stephen R. Donaldson and Terry Brooks. Also, long afternoons reading comic book after comic book, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, mostly Marvel - Daredevil and The Avengers in particular - but the occasional DC hero too, usually Batman or Green Arrow. Also, two sports sections every day, the local newspaper and The New York Times. In addition, I had a weekly subscription to Sports Illustrated and monthly ones to Mad, Cracked and National Lampoon. I read everywhere - on planes, in cars, at the beach, sometimes at the dinner table (to the consternation of my parents), in waiting rooms at the doctor’s office, and most of all; every night before I went to sleep, often with a flashlight furtively tucked under my sheets. The worlds I explored in books led directly into the worlds I dreamed about when I slept, and still do.

Such reading experiences were more formative than reading the classics I was assigned in school. Yes, I loved Dickens and Twain and Steinbeck, and both learned from and escaped into them; but I think these books worked for me because I already loved reading. Because opening new pages and encountering text I hadn’t seen before habitually gave me a thrill, I was pre-conditioned to be excited about any book a teacher handed me. But if reading school-mandated books was the only reading I ever did, I suspect my enthusiasm to do it might have been substantially tempered. If I hadn’t been doing so much reading on my own, I’m not sure I would have loved the classics nearly as much as an introduction to literature.

What worries me about the students I have now is that because they have so many other ways to spend their time, and according to the most recent NEA study, don’t do nearly as much reading on their own, the books we give them in school (largely the same ones I read 30 years ago) hold even less appeal than might be expected. According to an article in yesterday’s New York Times, the average young person between the ages of 8 and 18 spends 7-1/2 hours a day interacting with electronic media. When factoring in multi-tasking, such as listening to music while checking out Facebook, the number jumps to 11 hours. It was easy enough for my parents to limit the amount of time my siblings and I could spend watching the single television we had in our house, but restricting the use of TVs, cell-phones, smartphones, hand-held music devices, computers, video-games and all other electronic gadgets is a far greater challenge. Face it, for a lot of kids, The Red Badge of Courage and even Catcher in the Rye can’t compete with Grand Theft Auto, Guitar Hero and the YouTube flavor of the hour.

I am in no way adverse to electronic media and digital literacy. I wouldn’t expend so much effort writing this blog if I were, and I spend way too much time delving into the latest inconsequential sports story on ESPN.com. I’m no purist who thinks reading needs to take place with actual printed pages. I agree with Junot Díaz, the Pulitzer Prize winning author, when he says - and I’m going to paraphrase here because his language tends to be salty - the problem ain’t that people are reading Amazon Kindles instead of books, the problem is people ain’t reading. I can easily envision, even look forward to, a day in the not-too-distant future when the bulky backpacks kids lug to school are replaced by a single electronic reader holding all their textbooks. But another thing Díaz says is that reading is one of the best ways we have, perhaps the best way, to immerse our imaginations in the experiences of other human beings, to experience deep empathy for people who inhabit environments different than our own. Yes, TV and movies sometimes allow us to do that too, but those experiences are different because our imaginations don’t have to work as hard. All the images are already provided for us. When we read, we have to envision, our senses have to conjure.

Even 10 years ago, it was common for me to see kids bringing books they read for pleasure to school that they’d pull out during down times between classes, or at lunch if they didn’t have a group of friends to converse with. Now, that phenomenon is much more rare. Before the bell rings, most kids are texting or listening to music. My fear is that because young people aren’t reading as much on their own, because they have so many other entertainment options, the very act of reading, no matter what the book is, feels like an unsavory chore. I mean, thank God for Twilight and Harry Potter, but I’m afraid even those books aren’t enough. I’m afraid we’re losing the battle and I don’t think standing on principle and insisting, oh, but, we must - before all else - give kids the classics to read, is helping our cause. Elementary and middle school teachers seem to get this idea better than high school teachers do. Many of them are constantly looking for new high-interest books and graphic novels to pepper their classrooms with. The old Dick and Jane relics of the past are almost extinct. Yet, in high school, many of us still teach the same books that have been taught for the past 50 or 60 years.

I’m not suggesting we get rid of the classics. We do have much to learn from Shakespeare and Melville, of course, we do. But we have to work harder than we used to in order to ingrain reading habits into our students if we want them to actually read those books instead of skimming whatever constitutes today’s on-line version of CliffsNotes. We need better strategies for getting high-interest books into the hands of our students so that they, first and foremost, experience the act of reading as joyous. Whether that means re-instituting mandatory drop-everything-and-read-for-pleasure times at the high school level, or creating more units focused around students choosing their own books to read, or imagining new ideas that haven’t yet been tried, I’m not sure; but I know we need to do something. Electronic obsessions aren't withering away any time soon. In fact, they’re likely to grow ever more pervasive.

To me, the scariest thing about the Times article was when a 14-year-old kid described how he texted or watched YouTube videos on his smartphone in bed until he fell asleep. His description mirrors what I saw over the holidays when visiting relatives. As I read bedtime stories to my 8-year-old daughter, her cousin, under the same covers, wore headphones and played games on an I-Touch. I wonder how many kids are ushering themselves to dreamland in similar fashion. Who needs a furtive flashlight when your screen’s already lit for you?

Rest in peace, Robert B. Parker.

May the vitality of your characters, the love of reading your books, out-live you.

** NOTE - if you want to see young people who still clearly value the written word - the next big poetry event coming up is when Ann Arbor Wordworks presents its annual poetry concert Homegrown at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater in the Michigan League on Friday, January 29th. A whole bunch of poets of tremendous talent - including Maggie Ambrosino, Mike Moriarty, Ben Alfaro, Courtney Whittler, Aimee Le, Fiona Chamness, Gahl Liberzon, Brittany Floyd, Daniel Bigham, Maggie Hanks, Lauren Weston, Mike Kulick, Peggy Burrows, AJ McLittle, Chris Moriarty and Anthony Zick - will be rocking the stage. The show promises to be spectacular. It’ll run from approximately 7-9 p.m. The Mendelssohn is @ 911 N. University Ave.., in downtown Ann Arbor. Tickets will be $5 for students in advance, or $7 at the door. $10 and $12 for members of the general public. To reserve tickets at the advanced price or for more information, email me @ eyelev21@aol.com or call me @ 734-223-7443. **

Jeff Kass teaches Creative Writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor and at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, and directs the Literary Arts Programs at the Neutral Zone, including the VOLUME Youth Poetry Project, which meets every Thursday night at 7pm. He will post new blog entries every Tuesday and Thursday morning throughout the school year.