If usual proponents of the printed press are anything like me, they don’t have any real reasons for protesting e-readers. Like me, they appear generally skeptical of the role technology plays in our contemporary lives. They are also attached to the physicality of print books the smells, textures and weights that physical books bring to the reading experience.
Let me preface this column by saying that I’m an English major, so most of the work I do revolves around analyzing various texts, stories, ideas, philosophies and theories.
Perhaps what separates me from creative writing majors is that I am generally unaffected by the business side of publishing. I don't depend on writing as a source of income. There is a culture surrounding publishing and writers' groups that is usually lost on me.
Thus, I have to profess that my skepticism surrounding the digitalization of my favorite stories has no bearing in reality: I don’t really know if e-readers will wreck small publishing houses in San Francisco or New York City or if they will actually make people care less about literature and the arts than they already do.
What concerns me most is how this technology will change the nature of writing stories and reading them.
For me, it is the sense that my favorite stories and characters have finally succumbed to the digitally-driven spirit of the time, that nothing is immune to the pervasive nature of technology. I’m afraid that the timelessness for which literature has always been revered will be reduced to a stream of megabytes on the World Wide Web. It will have the shelf life of a tweet, the significance of a Facebook post.
True, the stories' readers have cherished will be more widely available to future generations, but it will be more available in a more fleeting, commoditized fashion.
Ray Bradbury, who The Guardian called “one of the last bastions against the digital age,” called the Internet “distracting” and “meaningless.”
“It’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere,” he said.
You see, the thing about the Internet is that it is truly a tool of democracy, equalizing everything with which it comes in contact.
There is a flattening effect: A circulating meme has the same weight of relevancy as a well-crafted essay. Once they are both outside the periphery of our attention span, we have a hard time carrying them with us. I have a hard time coming up with things I’ve read or seen on the Internet that have changed my life, but I can think of at least half a dozen books that have — perhaps because I’ve carried them in my hands.
Writers will no longer be writing for posterity, but will be competing for the nebulous spotlight of digital fame, which in these days comes in the form of viral status and features a cat. Their creativity will conform to fit the medium, which emphasizes speed over patience and quantity over quality. I’m afraid that literature will be like television, if novels are only available in online format: done solely for entertainment and written like it, too — relying heavily on cheap gimmicks to attract readers and ad space to sell art. I’m afraid that the digitization of literature will exasperate a culture that already pushes quick media consumption over lifelong enjoyment.
This debate surrounding the transition from physical books to electronic ones is less about outreach and more about quality. I realize that bibliophiles and print purists run the risk of sounding like high-brow elitists, while the opposing camp argues that easier access to literature will embolden creative communities.
But there is something to that.
Great literature is only produced if writers write under the pressure that their work might become important and meaningful to other people in the long run. Would John Milton have spent most of his life preparing for “Paradise Lost” if his primary audience only had time for 140 characters? Would Elizabeth Bishop spend 26 years writing “Moose” if she knew it’d be lost to a generation of readers who spend more time re-blogging the poem, than contemplating it?
Roland Barthes famously declared the "death of the author" in a 1967 essay. If stories are read purely in their digital forms and not in books, they too will die.
Reach the columnist at ctruong1@asu.edu or follow her at @ce_truong
