Hip and Trivial Youth Culture, Book Publishing, and the Greying of Canadian Nationalism

In Hip and Trivial , historian Robert Wright challenges the pervasive stereotype of young Canadians as addicts of televisual media who are fundamentally alienated from print culture. Examining the rise of "CanLit" and "KidLit" since the 1970s, and the more recent emergence of a powerful consensus among Canadians that reading ought to be an essential component of family life, Hip and Trivial demonstrates that young people in Canad have been extremely well served by the nation's "culture of literacy" as it has taken shape over the last thirty years. Youth today do not read less, or less voraciously, than their elders, Wright argues, but the historic linkages between youth, reading, and citizenship - so characteristic of the literary nationalism of the baby boomers - no longer obtains. However much they may mystify the keepers of the canon, for young Canadians living in a postmodern, globalized world of seemingly infinite cultural choice, reading has largely ceased to be a patriotic act.Wright, Robert is the author of 'Hip and Trivial Youth Culture, Book Publishing, and the Greying of Canadian Nationalism' with ISBN 9781551301884 and ISBN 1551301881.