In an article from the Dec. 24 issue of The New Yorker, "The Twilight of the Books," Caleb Crain suggests that electronic media are swiftly replacing the written word as the primary means of communicating stories and ideas. In doing so, they are transforming the Western literary tradition into a pre-literate oral tradition in which stories are communicated by sound and picture rather than through text. This is not only changing the culture, says Crain, but also our patterns of cognition.
Crain's ideas strike me as truly descriptive of our cultural state of affairs -- a state I do not believe we can sustain. The creation of entertaining television programming or engaging video game plotlines is the responsibility of writers. If literary culture were to fall through completely, where would the writers come from? The answer seems to be "nowhere" -- there would be nothing to put on TV but "Fear Factor," "American Idol" and "The Surreal Life." This seems to be the case already, as content-based shows are gradually phased out in favor of reality TV. In the oft-quoted words of W. B. Yeats, "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
This trend may be distressing, but there is reason for hope even when one is living on the shortest curl of Western Civilization's downward spiral. Books can offer an experience that neither television, nor videogames nor the Internet can ever really manage: contact with other worlds. A man never so fully inhabits another person's world than when he is made to process that person's thoughts. Books take us away from our morbid, modern lives and place us within a new consciousness. It may be the consciousness of a Hobbit, a giant insect (The Metamorphosis), a conquering hero (The Iliad), a murderer's tortured soul (Crime and Punishment") or a pervert (Lolita). With television and videogames, the world may sit vividly before us on a screen, but it cannot possess our souls like a good novel.
The power to make contact with other worlds -- perhaps our greatest source of solace -- has been diminished by our need to take in a lot of information at once. In college we are made to read many books, but we are not required to savor them or truly appreciate them. Robert Frost said that he never felt like he was actually reading books in school, but merely skimming them to see if he actually would like to read them. Children are taught to wade in up to their the ankles, absorbing the monosyllables of Dr. Seuss and the trite stupidity of Goosebumps, when a better method would be to chuck them into deeper waters and tackle the heavier stuff, like Grimm's Fairy Tales, Tom Sawyer or Treasure Island. Not to dump on Dr. Seuss and his ilk, but I, for one, hated reading in elementary school. We were always forced to read some contemporary children's literature -- geared appropriately to our age level -- about squirrels or talking veggies or something.
It wasn't until I discovered The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia that I began to really enjoy reading. Part of the reason those books were so enjoyable is that they were somewhat difficult for a young kid, and the cognitive challenges they presented made their respective worlds more real. Those books did not talk down to you.
I think that the emphasis on reading merely to master a skill and be literate rather than to appreciate, enjoy and gain a degree of self-knowledge is a function of the increasingly technocratic and bureaucratic society of a closed mind: "We need people who can read technical manuals and Calculus textbooks; if they need any personal enjoyment, it is easily to be found within the plasma screen or videogame console. Reading, with its troublesome need for silence and introspection, is an unnecessary drag."
I don't think that the death of the book is something permanent; if anything, it is a Passion play: crucifixion leading unto resurrection and ascension. For a little while, perhaps, we will be condemned to a new version of the Dark Ages; condemned to gather around the glowing visages of super-models devouring reindeer testicles ("Fear Factor") or the exploitation of mentally ill, would-be divas ("American Idol") for entertainment.
But I suppose that we shall eventually tire of those cheap thrills, and some future Homer will pick up the lyre -- to sing of heroes once more.
