THE BOOK REVIEW : End Papers

Bills before state legislatures rarely make news outside the home state. A bill just introduced before the New York State legislature, however, may be an exception.

New York State Sen. John R. Dunne and Assemblyman Mark Alan Siegel have introduced legislation to eliminate the state and city sales tax on books, giving books the same tax exemption accorded to magazines and newspapers. A campaign on behalf of the bill has been launched by a national coalition including the Assn. of American Publishers, the Authors’ League, the American Booksellers Assn., the New York Regional Booksellers Assn., the American Library Assn., the National Assn. of College Stores, the Council of Periodical Distributors Assns., the major bookstore chains Waldenbooks and B. Dalton’s, and the Business Council for Effective Literacy. If the campaign succeeds in New York, it will unquestionably be extended to the other 43 states that tax book sales. California is likely to be at the top of that list. Some states exempt schoolbooks. Others exempt religious books. California exempts none.

The claim made by the New York campaign’s sponsors is that while the revenue consequences of rescinding the sales tax on books are negligible, the consequences in enhanced book distribution stand to be considerable. New York’s retail book sales in 1984 were $140 million, more or less evenly divided between New York State and New York City. The 4.25% state tax on these sales yielded the state only $5.6 million. The 4% city tax yielded the city only $2.98 million. As for the book distribution consequences, the American Assn. of Publishers claims that at the paperback end of the serious book market, 50 or 60 cents’ worth of price may make the difference between sale and no sale.

Assemblyman Siegel declares: “The fact that New York State taxes the Holy Bible but not the National Enquirer strikes me as somewhat incongruous.” Sen. Dunne contrasts the $5.6 million the state would lose by repealing the sales tax with the $46 million it has spent since 1980 in its war on illiteracy. Siegel strikes a grace note: The publishers really have nothing against the National Enquirer. Dunne sounds the real keynote of the campaign: the threat of rising illiteracy.

Illiteracy seems so much the social disease of the year that one is tempted to fault the publishing coalition for opportunism. On a list of measures to combat illiteracy, perhaps few of us would put the elimination of the sales tax on books in first place. In this context, however, Books in Our Future, a report published quietly last fall by the Library of Congress, makes interesting reading.

In that report, Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin speaks of illiteracy and “aliteracy” as “twin menaces.” Part 2 of his report, the larger of its two sections, asks what can be done about these menaces. Or, more exactly and more pragmatically, it asks who can do something about them; and the answer seems to include almost everybody. Nobody is excused from a share in the responsibility to create and maintain “A Nation of Readers.”

Thus, in the subsection, “What Our Citizens Are Doing and Can Do,” Boorstin lists: “Families and Homes, Schools, Libraries, Churches, Civic and Fraternal Organizations, Businesses,” and half a dozen entries more, while in the (much smaller) subsection, “What the Executive Branch Can Do,” he makes separate suggestions for the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense, etc. etc. It all begins to seem a little bewildering, but nothing simpler would be true to the real complexity of the situation, and from the complexity, a simple point does gradually emerge. The very multiplicity of Boorstin’s recommendations makes it clear, finally, that the habit of reading, sustained by the availability of books, has not been created by the state and will not be rescued by any kind of Apollo Book project or U.S. Department of Literacy. This habit resides in not the state but society, everywhere in society; though the state may be wise to recognize in the decline of reading a threat to the society, the most that it can do by direct intervention will not be enough to reverse the decline.

What government can best do, therefore, is most likely to consist of measures that smooth the way, however slightly, for disorganized private initiative. Businesses receive tax incentives for socially desirable forms of activity. The elimination of the sales tax on books is the same sort of thing writ small but writ repeatedly. The hoped-for result: Thousands of times over, a New York kid paging through a $4.95 book buys the book and gets a nickel back instead of walking away from it to save the 41-cent sales tax.

In October, 1984, the Post Office issued a stamp bearing the motto “A Nation of Readers.” Alas, says Jonathon Kozol, whose “Illiterate America” (Doubleday) seems to have brought this issue to a national audience, 30 million Americans cannot read the stamp. The number of illiterate adults, Kozol says, exceeds by nearly 7 million the entire vote cast for Ronald Reagan in 1984.

One may quarrel about this or that attempt to put flesh on the statistical bones of the illiteracy problem, but the problem is clearly enormous. Just as clearly, the elimination of the sales tax on books in one state is no solution to the problem. It is only a drop in the bucket. What Boorstin’s report suggests, however, is that literacy is a bucket that can only be kept filled by drops. Only the steady accumulation of thousands of measures in thousands of public and private settings can keep alive a habit that underlies every aspect of public life.

This is why many around the country will be watching the New York State legislature with unusual attention next fall. One can only hope that some of those watching will be California legislators.