At a dinner party last weekend, nestled between complaints about the algorithm and the rising cost of organic endive, the conversation inevitably turned to the youth. Specifically, their absolute refusal to sit quietly with a physical book. We wrung our hands. We blamed TikTok. We diagnosed an entire generation with terminal screen-brain. But then I read the news that James Patterson, the undisputed titan of airport thrillers, is collaborating with MrBeast, the undisputed titan of screaming in thumbnail images. And suddenly, my despair vanished.
For years, the publishing industry has stubbornly clung to the outdated notion that a story should be its own reward. How thoroughly out of touch with the marketplace. Patterson and MrBeast understand what the coastal literati refuse to accept: if you want a fourteen-year-old to engage with a murder mystery today, you must physically trap them inside a decommissioned bank vault with the manuscript and refuse to let them out until they can name the killer.
As someone who has proudly maintained a carefully curated bookshelf in the background of all my Zoom calls, I consider myself a staunch defender of the literary arts. But I am also a realist. If we want to preserve the cultural cachet of holding a thick, hardcover book on a crowded subway, we must adapt to the incentives of the era. Why should finishing a chapter of a thriller merely provide a sense of narrative resolution, when it could unlock a brand new Tesla Model 3?
I find this approach to literacy deeply refreshing. It transforms reading from a solitary, passive chore into a high-stakes endurance event.
I recently instituted a version of this methodology in my own home. After realizing my children were wasting their weekend on mindless digital consumption, I confiscated their screens, handed them each a hardcover copy of Kiss the Girls, and informed them that the last one to take their hand off the dust jacket would inherit the summer house in Nantucket. The sheer, unblinking terror in their eyes as they battled dehydration reminded me why literature is so vital to the human experience.
The synergy here is undeniable, as both men realized long ago that you don't actually have to write the content yourself as long as your name is printed in a font large enough to be seen from space.
Hardwick’s insight highlights the beautiful symmetry of this partnership. When you examine their respective empires, Patterson and MrBeast are practically identical. Patterson relies on a sprawling, highly efficient factory of co-authors to churn out suspense thrillers at a staggering industrial scale. MrBeast relies on a sprawling, highly efficient factory of video editors to churn out footage of people surviving in grocery stores at a staggering industrial scale. Bringing them together is not a desperate bid for relevance; it is the natural, inevitable merger of two multinational corporations dedicated exclusively to keeping the human brain occupied during long flights.
Naturally, the literary purists are suffering from a collective case of the ick. They argue that wrapping a book launch in the frenetic, attention-fracturing aesthetics of a YouTube challenge degrades the sanctity of the written word. But these critics are failing to romanticize the sheer pedagogical possibilities if we retroactively applied this framework to the rest of the literary canon.
The Great Gatsby would be exponentially more relatable to Gen Z if Jay Gatsby was introduced as a philanthropic vlogger who just bought 10,000 strangers a green light across the bay. Moby-Dick is essentially just a nineteenth-century vlog of a man attempting an extreme hunting challenge and failing miserably.
Furthermore, this collaboration finally solves the central dilemma of modern parenting: how to outsource intellectual development to a wealthy stranger. I simply do not have the bandwidth to sit down and read to my children. But if a screaming twenty-six-year-old in a branded hoodie is willing to drop them into a giant pit of foam blocks until they finish Maximum Ride, I consider that a profound victory for the village it takes to raise a child.
The actual collaboration, a purported young adult novel, is merely the beginning. Once the infrastructure is in place, the publishing industry can finally abandon the archaic business model of hoping someone wanders into a Barnes & Noble. Instead, authors will simply kidnap their target demographic, drop them on a deserted island, and airdrop a new chapter every time a contestant successfully starts a fire.
We are currently testing a format where teenagers have to solve the plot holes in a Women's Murder Club novel before the walls of an escape room slowly crush them, and our focus-group retention metrics have never been higher.
It is profoundly comforting to envision a future where local libraries are retrofitted with laser grids and massive vats of synthetic slime. We have spent decades trying to convince children that reading is fundamental. It turns out, we just needed to convince them that reading is a grueling, monetized trial of physical endurance.
If Patterson and MrBeast can prove that the threat of being buried alive is enough to make a teenager care about the adventures of Alex Cross, they haven't just saved publishing. They have provided a roadmap for saving the entire humanities department.