Later Days, Literary Haze
Words: Sara Marinac
A novelist by the name of Peter Carey, while at an Australian Writer’s Festival asked the audience what appeared to be an awfully basic question. He asked, “Who has read literature in the last week?” calling for a show of hands, while raising his own confidently up in the air. “What a lot of freaks… what a very strange lot of people we are.”
Carey brings up a good point, in tow with some startling statics, illustrating the truth and a growing cultural concern: readers are a thing of the past, members of some sort of absurd cult. As one third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. This is the kind of world issue that cannot be solved merely by submissiveness or fatalism.
I am a part of this rare breed, this absurd cult, so to speak. I’m the daughter of an obsessive compulsive -even uncompromising at points- book worm. As a little girl, my bed time stories consisted of works by Jane Arden, C.S Lewis, and Woody Allen. While, my high school years have been spent well endowed, consuming poem after poem by Charles Bukowski, in between the driving and the smoking and the public transportation, and the losing touch with friends, and the late nights, and the early mornings, and constant grind that is now my new schedule, reading takes up all of that in between.
As the years have passed, my ceaseless craving for reading has only increased. The euphoric bliss that many experience, curled up on the big comfy sofa watching the Super Bowl, arrives my way when I step into my favourite bookstore, footloose and fancy free. This also explains the unvarying state of my bedroom –a battlefield of books stacked in every which direction. To my great surprise, I repeatedly discover Kerouac or Palahniuk under my pillow or between the sheets.
This may be somewhat of an extreme example, but the truth still remains that even leisurely readers are becoming few and far between. Jonathan Frazen, encompasses it perfectly, “the novel, as a seat in cultural authority is teetering on the brink”.
Surely, this can be seen as a generational problem, as well as something that has been at hand courtesy of the onset of film, television, and undeniably the internet. It is evident that other media has ingrained itself in the general public’s lives, not merely as an information source but also as a reliable vice for recreation and entertainment. This all meaning, we have become something of a “screen culture”, leaving us with all its associated results.
Well it’s a bloodthirsty world out there, packed full of instant gratification and now, it’s a whole lot easier to watch T.V, or log onto facebook, maybe go to the movies, and I can’t help but feel entirely defeated that traditional reading has been put on the back burner. Here’s the thing though, it takes actual downshifting to get out of a frenzied, fast pace state of mind, into a place where you can be calm enough to read, so people don’t read as much.
On average, Americans spend 40 percent of their day writing and responding to emails; a rate that continues on an incline in the midst of a growing popularity of the iPhone and BlackBerry. And yes, while we are all still reading via email, blogs, online publications or even social media updates –this prompt digital information brings with an enlarged helplessness to focus on a work of reasonable length and depth.
A novel demands commitment, it’s an agreement to keep our attention focused on something other than ourselves for awhile. It also delays and paces the gratification until the story unfolds entirely.
Simply writing ‘LOL’ will never have the strength of capability to substitute the sound of a friend laughing out loud. The process of reading on a screen, personally speaking will never spark the satisfaction of holding a book by a great author, page by page, utterly and wonderfully captivated.
It would be something of outlandish nature to think that everyone shares these sentiments but I can’t help but wonder if it’s a lost cause all in all. But then again, maybe I’m not so different. I am as much of a Generation Y as the next person, having my BlackBerry, iPod and internet connection in tact at all times.
Taking a look at the most recent statistics, things may not be as bad as one would think. Perhaps there is a light at the end of this infinite tunnel, even if a very faint one at that. Research has discovered that book sales in general grew 6.3 percent from 2009 to 2010, with fiction growing two percent during this period. Not to mention, figures from the public library stastical report show similar results, with overall loans increasing in the past five years.
Although there doesn’t seem to be any obvious explanation for this unexpected growth, I like to think reading might be having a revival of cool. It may be equally as plausible that authors such as Stephanie Meyer or Steig Larasson have a hand in this matter. As wherever I seem to find myself mindlessly staring off into space, I notice The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Twilight being read.
It seems as though the E-reader’s and the iPad are enabling to bridge the reading gap for generations to come. The endearing aspect of these is that they actually expand the number of frequent readers –not reduce it, by presenting literature to the new generation of readers.
In the US alone iPad sales hit two million in less than two months after its release. But are E-readers actually attracting people to read?
In the first weekend of all downloads for the new iPad, a number of them were not from the Apple store, instead they were from free download sources, where all the classics can be found for free! These range broadly from Hamlet to the 19th century novel.
I think it’s fair enough to say, the best novels are great works of art, and anyone whose read one will be sure to second that notion. Yet, potentially the most remarkable fixation about a novel is that, as a form of art it is all inclusive. Unlike so many other forms, it isn’t reserved for a luxurious museum or gallery; books are available for anyone who perks interest.
So in short, it can be said that our comprehension of life and even ourselves is improved when we read. We are given this wonderful chance to be taken to another world and experience life in someone else’s shoes. And hey, yeah we can go and see some quintessential actor in their latest film, but we don’t get to be the character they play, not in the same way we do when we read.
There’s an unspeakable experience you obtain from a book, an immense and to some varying degree, emotional experience that you just don’t come across anywhere else. For a cultural concern, that is something worth savaging.
As for me, I will read until the day I die because it is my lucky charm, my little black dress, my Sunday best.
"Man, I was thinking about unrequited love. I figure it’s best to just walk that shit off. Find someone else to be excited about. It’s like if you love ice cream but your ice cream man friend won’t give you any. Maybe he’s got a good reason. It cuts into profits. Who knows? But he likes you as a friend and wants to hang out anyway. It just drives you crazy to hang out with that dude, even if he’s being reasonable from his point of view. So don’t hang out with him. What, you ONLY like ice cream? It’s ice cream or nothing? Don’t be an asshole. Learn to love donuts."
- Joey Comeau (via caramarieterlep)
(via sleepingpills)
I have emotions
that are like newspapers that
read themselves.
I go for days at a time
trapped in the want ads.
I feel as if I am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house:
18 rooms
$37,000
I’m yours
ghosts and all.
Tokyo
June 2, 1976
-richard brautigan, “real estate”
