An appalling thought...

This question was hotly debated back in the 1950s when TV was still in its swaddling cloths, so to speak. More books are being printed and read today than ever before. Also, more television is available and, presumably, being watched. It would appear that us of one medium has nothing to do with the other.

As for the other question implicit in your post, I don't think it's reasable to compare a movie to the book on which it was based. They are really totally separate entities. And why, pray, should I have read a second- or third-rate book on which a passably watchable movie is based? Very often the movie barely resembles its source book.

The classic case-in-point is To Have and Have Not, a terrific Bogart movie which was also Lauren Bacall's film debut and which was -- according to the credits -- based on the Hemingway novel. It happens to be one of Hemingway's worst books. It also so happens that the script for the movie has nothing whatever to do with the plot of the book, except for the names of two or three of the main characters.

I see no danger of people's reading habits changing because of either films or television. Now, the Internet...that's another story.

There are several hundred thousand books published each year and a few thousand (at most) movies released. A person can easily go to a movie and read several books without managing read the book that corresponds to the movie.

We got our first television in 1956--there was one channel, and "there was nothing on."

Now we have a satellite dish, and can pull over 500 channels--there's still "nothing on."

Before television, we listened to our favorite radio programs, which engaged our imaginations much more. But whether radio or teevee, before and after our favorite programs, we read books. I suspect the answer to your question is not that Americans no longer read, rather that they no longer have much taste in reading matter, especially as generations are raised in front of the teevee by parents who were raised in front of the teevee. Media "dumbs" down to find the most common (and marketable) denominator, and the effect is telling. People are addicted to sensation, due to the expectations television raises, and books which require thought might not do as well.

Pure theorizing on my part, but i am almost never wrong . . . just ask me!

A much better example is Tropic of Capricorn, which wasn't even close to Miller's book. The motion picture was about a gothic romance in Australia in the early 19th century, rather than raw, sweaty sex in New York and Paris in the early 20th century. I saw it on Saturday Night at the Movies as a kid.

Later, as a dirty-minded college boy, i read Miller's Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring--and had a good laugh about the movie.