DEATH BY SHAKESPEARE

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Reading may be fundamental, but too much could be detrimental to your health

In 1991 no one could have imagined the ramifications of people's eyeballs
darting back and forth in uncontrollable spasms. Ten years later it's
accepted as just one more weird symptom of what is now known as
compulsive literacy disorder (CLD), a disease that compels people to read
themselves to death.

CLD victims, of course, don't succumb to the illness itself but to
complications produced by reading everything that falls into their hands.
Having ploughed through the complete works of Franz Kafka in the course of
an afternoon, for example, one rising young comic committed suicide. And
a particularly desperate young man died suddenly of a brain aneurysm
after reading a 1,000-page legal brief belonging to a contract lawyer.

While books can be had at a premium, patience is in short supply. A
public recitation of nearly 900 pounds of poetry published by Vanity
Press was cut short when, halfway through the first volume, the reciter
was mercifully shot. Other, less discriminating listeners then proceeded
to scavenge his books,

Christian fundamentalists cite Scripture as evidence that CLD is divine
retribution for the sin of seeking original thought. But doctors tracking
CLD now believe a recombinant computer virus, scrambled with an Evelyn
Wood speed-reading program, was "accidentally" transferred to humans.

The latest conspiracy theory: The government, frustrated with the poor
quality of our educational system and Japan's dominance in every field,
actually planted the virus in segments of the population, Neurologists,
however, speculate that the transfer occurred in the same way that
physical therapy forges new neural pathways in the brain of a stroke
victim-by exercising the affected limbs. Certain sequences of keystrokes
on a computer keyboard, they suggest, created a route for the virus to
find a home in the nervous system.

Progress in the treatment of CLD has been slow and the fallout has
been devastating. Libraries are looted, people mug each other in the
streets for as little as a paragraph, and violent domestic quarrels
erupt over who has reading rights to the printed material on the backs
of milk cartons and cereal boxes.

According to some estimates, moreover, nearly 4 million people have
earned the equivalent of a Ph.D. in one field or another, virtually
overnight. With no jobs for these people, thousands of them have been
rounded up and carried off to "think tanks."

To meet the growing demand, newspapers in New York, Chicago, and San
Francisco have dramatically increased their press runs. Dailies now put
out morning, afternoon, and evening editions. The tragic result: Forests
are dwindling, Paper isn't being recycled because people hang on to any
scrap with something printed on it.

The phenomenon has led to all sorts of human rights abuses: Writers
are blamed and persecuted on one side and hunted by profiteers on the
other. Some have been kidnapped, shackled to writing desks, and forced
to produce, day and night, regardless of inspiration. Others, working at
computers, contract the disease themselves and quit writing to join the
roving hordes of what one editorial called "gluttons for publishment."
One popular author, prolific under the best of circumstances, churned
out a 20,000-page novel in a single weekend. The impatient mob of fans
on his front lawn rioted when he spontaneously combusted on Sunday night.

Reading treatment centers are popping up everywhere, but their staffs'
efforts to wean people from the printed word and reintroduce them to
television and videos have backfired: Patients routinely fast-forward
through taped programs to get to the credits.

Even so, researchers are nowhere near a cure and paranoia runs rampant.
People don't dare pull their own reading material out in public
anymore, especially on the subway. Indeed, as a result of increasing
subway crime, people have returned to cars in droves, clogging the
nation's highways and byways. The congestion is exacerbated by the
collisions that regularly occur around billboards and traffic signs.

And what do the victims do while they're waiting for ambulances? They
read bumper stickers, which often run to several paragraphs. Three of
the most poignant examples, however, state simply: IGNORANCE IS BLISS, JUST
SAY NO TO BOOKS, and BETTER READ THAN DEAD.