Television: The Cyclops That Eats Books What is destroying America today is not the liberal breed of politicians, or the International Monetary Fund bankers, misguided educational elite, or the World Council of Churches. These are largely symptoms of a greater disorder. But if there is any single institution to blame, it is television. Television, in fact, has greater power over the lives of most Americans than any educational system or government or church. Children particularly are easily influenced. They are fascinated, hypnotized(着迷的) and tranquilized by TV. It is often the center of their world. Even when the set is turned off, they continue to tell stories about what they've seen on it. No wonder, then, that when they grow up they are not prepared for the frontline of life they simply have no mental defenses to confront the reality of the world. The Truth About TV One of the most disturbing truths about TV is that it eats books. Once out of school, nearly 60% of all adult Americans have never read a single book, and most of the rest read only one book a year. Alvin Kernan, author of The Death of Literature, says that reading books 'is ceasing to be the primary way of knowing something in our society.' He also points out that bachelor's degrees in English literature have declined by 33% in the last twenty years. American libraries, he adds, are in crisis, with few patrons to support them. Thousands of teachers at the elementary, secondary and college levels can testify that their students' writing exhibits a tendency towards superficiality(肤浅) that wasn't seen, say, ten or fifteen years ago. It shows up not only in the students' lack of analytical skills but in their poor command of grammar and rhetoric. The mechanics of the English language have been tortured to pieces by TV. Visual, moving images can't be held in the net of careful language. They want to break out. They really have nothing to do with language. So language, grammar and rhetoric have become fractured. Recent surveys by dozens of organizations also suggest that up to 40% of the American public is functionally illiterate. The problem isn't just in our schools or in the way reading is taught. TV teaches people not to rean. It makes them incapable of engaging in an art that is now perceived as strenuous(费力的) and active. Passive as it la, television has invaded our culture so completely that you see its effects in every quarter, even in the literary world. It shows up m supermarket paperbacks, from Stephen King to pulp .fiction (低俗小说). These are really forms of verbal TV-literature that is so superficial that those who read it can revel, in the same sensations they experience when they are watching TV. Even more importantly, the growing influence of television-has changed people's habits and values and affected their assumptions about the world. The sort of reflective, critical and value- laden thinking encouraged by cooks has been rendered out of date. The Cyclops In this context, we would do well to recall the Cyclops(独眼巨人)--the race of one-eyed giants in Greek myth. The following is Hamilton's description of the encounter between the adventurer Odysseus and Polyphemus, a Cyclops. As Odysseus was on his way home, he and his crew found Polyphemus' cave. They stayed in it as a shelter and waited for the owner to come back. At last he came, hideous and huge, tall as a great mountain crag. Driving his flock before him he entered and closed the eave's mouth with a ponderous slab of stone. Then looking around he caught sight of the strangers. He roared out and stretched out his mighty arms and in each great hand seized one of the men and dashed his brains out on the ground. Slowly he feasted off them to the last shred, and then, satisfied, stretched himself out across the cavern and slept. He was safe from attack. None but h