NPR: How E-Books Will Change Reading And Writing
Earlier, on Facebook, I said this article was sort of interesting, and sort of not.
I would like to revise that statement.
I'm glad for people to be talking about how eReaders and the growth of electronic literacy -- two very separate things -- might change the ways in which humans tell stories.
In the end, that's what all literature comes down to -- the ways in which humans tell stories.
The article represents a distinct failure of imagination and a fundamental refusal to understand eReaders and electronic literacy from the inside. Picking up a Kindle and paging through a few works of fiction does not mean one understands eReaders from the inside.
We'll start with Carr,
"When printed books first became popular, thanks to Gutenberg's press, you saw this great expansion of eloquence and experimentation," says Carr. "All of which came out of the fact that here was a technology that encouraged people to read deeply, with great concentration and focus. And as we move to the new technology of the screen ... it has a very different effect, an almost opposite effect, and you will see a retreat from the sophistication and eloquence that characterized the printed page."
We've come upon the perennial cry that the cultural sky is falling.
For one, the article appears to be conflating eBooks and electronic literacy, which are two different things. One is a form/at, and the other is a shift in perspective. Neither are the death knell of art.
Let's get some historical perspective: the printing press ultimately encouraged something like that "encouragement to read deeply," but it also destroyed the culture of orality. After all, who needs to create epic poetry -- meant to be spoken and sung -- when we can simply write the story down?
More perspective: the culture of oral storytelling was communal. Reading a novel is an isolated experience. Fittingly, the novel became a bourgeious experience; I'm not saying that with judgment right now, just trying to locate us in a social and historical context.
Also, Guttenberg didn't personally revolutionize literacy; it happened gradually and coincided with the rise of the middle class and the eventual democratization of education. It didn't so much "encourage people to read deeply" as teach them how to read in the first place.
Y'know. You have to be taught to read. That requires a number of resources.
At this point electronic literacy is hard to predict. We're still in the middle of the paradigm shift, but that's a fucking exciting place to be!
At present, I'll conjecture that electronic literacy moves us toward a new and more communal form of storytelling -- because readers have greater opportunity to connect with one another, and because individual stories are themselves easier linked to one another. We may reconnect with the intertextuality -- the heteroglossia -- which Bakhtin saw with the advent of the novel.
I should come back to all this, particularly what I mean by that last point. It's hard for me to parse my thoughts right now because the whole "decay of art" rhetoric... irritates me. It's a case of seeing what one wants to see, and it belies a serious lack of imagination.
Moving on to some of the things Grossman says.
"It will be incumbent on novelists to hook readers right away," says Grossman. "You won't be allowed to do a kind of tone poem overture, you're going to want to have blood on the wall by the end of the second paragraph."
Let's all take another step back.
The more books that are available to readers, the more important good openings are, espeically if you want to capture a large audience. That's called mass production. That's nothing new. The greater selection a reader has, the more choosey she can afford to be. Of course they're going to reach for the story with the best hook.
Once could say that the importance of a good hook is Older Than Fuedalism -- possibly even Older Than Dirt -- with the Classical advice that a story should start in media res.
Moreover, a strong hook and beautiful poetic language are not mutually exclusive.
There is no necessary relationship between the two, and it's disengenous to claim that there is.
I don't yet own an eReader, but I have spent a great deal of time reading fiction on a computer screen -- which is actually a gread deal more inconvenient than eReaders. On a computer screen you may be scrolling endlessly; all the eReaders I'm familiar with actually model the turning of a page.
I would conjecture that the main effect eReaders will have is twofold:
1) They will encourage a rennaissance in the short form.
We've already been seeing an increase in successful short story anthologies. Short forms have long been a hard sell in the publishing industry because they're largely not cost effective -- but that statement is based on the print model of publishing.
Hopefully this will open the door for writers who primarily work in the short form; it may even bring back the idea of the single author anthology. There's no inherent reason why you couldn't treat a eBook short story collection much like one treats an .mp3 album on iTunes or what-have-you. Buy one story, a couple stories, or the whole thing at a discount. (No, I don't expect the industry to hop immediately on board with such an idea, but I'm interested in potentials here.)
Moreover, the short form lends itself more easily to experimentation. Readers (and publishers) are more likely to take a chance and read outside their comfort zone if the length of commitment is low.
Don't misunderstand; I'm not suggesting there's no place for long-form experimental pieces.
No, right now I'm interested in highlighting the organic opportunities, which may emerge from the proliferation of eReaders.
2) Yes, there is some difference in the experience between reading a printed page and reading off a screen
In my experience, shorter paragraphs are easier to read on screen. In fact, I think that's rapidly apparent in the blogosphere. I believe many internet-based story markets are aware of this as well -- c.f. the guidelines at Clarkesworld.
However, we've been slowly trending toward this since the early 20th century, as should be apparent to anyone who's read a 19th century novel or two.
Short paragraphs and tight openings are not a death knell for the novel. Neither are mutually exclusive with strong prose. Short paragraphs in particular could present whole new possibities for poetic prose.
Most poetry is a very short form, after all; it's given to stanzas and shorter statements.
Novelist Rick Moody gave it a shot.
"I began to see that trying to write within this tiny little frame, 140 characters, was kind of like trying to write haiku. It's very poetical in its compaction, and it kind of got under my skin, and I kept thinking, 'Wouldn't it be fun to try and work with this?' " Moody says.
I agree wholeheartedly with Moody's desire to play with the constraints of a twitter length story. Ultimately, 140 characters is not a feasible length to sustain a whole genre, but the desire to play with limits should always be celebrated.
After all, Hemingway wrote a successful six word story.
The article does suggest that the presentation of Moody's twitter story wasn't entirely successful, but the flaw appears to have been with the new technology and not the story itself.
In the end, what use is it to cry and moan and gnash our authorial teeth that the vast intertubes will destroy art?
I'm much more interested in looking at the opportunities that come with the constraints of a new form, the paradigms that open up with a new way of reading.
