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Messages 78-77 deleted by topic administrator between 04-17-2006 10:19 AM and 04-06-2006 09:34 PM |
Bookninja  01-10-2006
10:14 AM ET (US)
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Literature is alive in the cracks and corners
Like mildew. Someone get an old toothbrush!
This isn't the first time I've seen a red flag. Ten years ago, Lewis Lapham heralded the death of literature in a published letter to his nephew (an aspiring writer) in Harper's magazine. I wondered then, as I do now: Could this be true? I've always found literacy and literature outside the mainstream and in the private corners and cracks of society. Below Manhattan, in the city's subway system, you can find more readers of classical and contemporary literature than you can in all the city's libraries. I wonder how the report might have come out had New York City subway riders been tested.
Dudes, if you're merely talking about "print", I say, yes, it'll remain alive in the subways of New York. But the grimy issues of the New York Post and tattered movie posters don't count as literature. Seriously, even if the margins ARE the ones holding up the roof, shouldn't we be worried that there aren't enough walls? They ARE the misfits, after all, not the masses. Should we be shifting our save-the-whales rhetoric about "the death of literature" to "the death of society's outcasts"?
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CHB
12-20-2005
07:31 AM ET (US)
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Double?
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Chris
12-20-2005
07:17 AM ET (US)
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Must be that one with the double meaning in the title.
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Bookninja 12-19-2005
08:21 PM ET (US)
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Which horrible Black Eyed Peas song were you referring to?
P
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Lee Shedden 12-19-2005
06:29 PM ET (US)
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If mass media is dead, does that mean that that horrible Black Eyed Peas song is no longer a big hit?
Thank God! This is the best Christmas present ever!
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Bookninja 12-19-2005
10:41 AM ET (US)
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The death of mass media
Um.
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Bookninja 11-17-2005
09:33 AM ET (US)
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Carried around any good books lately?
Faker faker, shake-and-baker.
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Bookninja 09-16-2005
10:41 AM ET (US)
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And in related news...
The dumbing down of literature continues apace.
Some books achieve the status of cultural landmarks: Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and, more recently, acclaimed blockbusting novels such as Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. The guilty truth is, though, that imposing volumes of this size and significance tend to sit pristine on the bookshelf and are never read.
The publishing industry now has an answer. It is bringing out new editions of some of the great, often unread, works with a fresh emphasis on 'accessibility'. Some may call it dumbing down. The books will be, well, simpler.
Somebody ought to take a serious look at One Duck Stuck in the Muck. That damn book of tongue twisters is very difficult to read. I think it's a disservice to our children to continue to allow its difficulty to undermine their self-confidence and futures in button pushing and lever pulling.
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Bookninja 06-05-2005
11:17 PM ET (US)
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More books, fewer readers
Some hard numbers on our situation. It looks grim, folks. I'd pack up and head for Muskoka to wait things out like they used to back in the days of killer disease and health care that involved the liberal application of lower life forms. Hell, I'd pack up and head for Muskoka anyway.
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Bookninja 05-13-2005
07:01 AM ET (US)
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End of the written word?? <gasp!>
A professor predicts the end of writing and reading by 2050. Does this mean we'll just be left with spoken word? Eeep!
He points to the phonograph, telephone, television, video, movies, and instant and text messaging lingo as proof of our culture's unconscious rebellion against text.
He cites statistics that show that IQ scores worldwide are getting higher as literacy rates are plummeting. Children especially just don't want to learn to read and write, and this is not just for the socioeconomic reasons people tend to ascribe to it, he contends.
The end of reading and writing?! Over my dead body! Oh, wait... (From Q&Q)
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Bookninja 05-08-2005
10:17 PM ET (US)
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"The merchants of doom"
Something tells me this whole thing is going to get under Corey Doctorow's (BoingBoing's point-person on copyright obsession) bonnet like a nano-somethingorother with macro-spikes.
Publishing is certainly in the throes of the biggest print revolution since Gutenberg. But that's not to say that the book as we know it is doomed to extinction. Indeed, there is a line of argument, from historical principles, that says copyright is inalienable.
Let's not forget that publishers and writers, as content creators, retain contractual control of their material. The written word is a precious resource but a resilient one, whose well-being is comparatively easy to police, at least in the marketplace, if not in the political arena.
The international copyright convention may have been drafted in the days of hot metal but if the publishers have the willpower and the savoir faire, copyright legislation can be redrafted to take account of the 'Napsterisation' threat.
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Bookninja 04-26-2005
09:29 AM ET (US)
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Thrown on the fire
Good books endangered in Britain?
Today's corporate weather-makers hate "book-lovers", as they sneeringly refer to them. They despise curious readers committed to the range and quality of what they buy, such as those who bother with books coverage in intelligent magazines or newspapers such as this. Instead, extra resources will now go into snaring the fitful attention of affluent but apathetic semi-readers who, deep down, believe that, in the deathless words of Philip Larkin's "A Study of Reading Habits", "Books are a load of crap." Ah, but those non-readers made an exception for The Da Vinci Code. So let's have much more of the same brain-shrinking junk. What was it that Bradbury's firemen burnt? Good books, of course.
It appears the "alarm" in alarmism comes in stereo. Both left and right use it quite well.
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Bookninja 04-24-2005
10:46 PM ET (US)
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British schools giving up classics
Old people plotzing.
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Bookninja 03-28-2005
11:27 PM ET (US)
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Books produced like eggs from factory farming
Do they come printed with that funky "Omega 3" thing on them? (How do they get the little printers up the chickens' arseholes?)
Imagine you were in a lonely underground station, late at night, when a dodgy-looking bloke began to walk towards you. Wouldn't you feel a whole lot better if he suddenly whipped an Ian Rankin paperback out of his pocket, put on a pair of specs, and started to read? It might only be a cunning ruse to make you drop your guard and loosen your grip on your wallet, but at least you'd be in a happier frame of mind when the fatal blow was delivered.
Why do books, and their readers, have this hallowed image? Is it because they're a quiet lot who rarely roam in packs, who are more likely to stay at home than create mayhem on the terraces, and are less noticeably anti-social than the music lover whose tinny headphone buzz can turn docile commuters into a lynch mob?
Whatever the reason, it is wholly bogus. Books are as mixed a blessing as free school dinners. Whoever thinks otherwise has no idea just how influential or dangerous they can be. Anyone so deluded must know nothing about them.
What are you saying? [Blogger grabs lapels of journalist and shakes dramatically] What are you SAYING??!?!
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