The history of the English language is a subject that has interested me from time to time. It is rare for an Indo-European language to lack most inflections (endings on verbs and nouns), to make modular use of helper or auxiliary verbs ('If she had gone to town yesterday...'), and to lack gender. With its history of borrowing from other languages and innovating itself -- without some centralized bureaucracy full of language police as in the French model -- it should be capable of much more.
For instance, when is somebody going to invent, and the rest of society cleave unto, a phrase or word that adequately describes 'drowning in trivia.' Trifles, distraction, minutiae, soul-sucking drivel, and other words are pretty good. But we need something better to express the debasement of human dignity and the utter destruction of the human soul that the internet now offers.
Why do smartphones and drivel-blogs take up so much of our time compared to reading classic books? I was just sitting here reading a classic novel, Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities." I am moderately interested in the book. Why then do I feel this magnetic attraction to switch over to the Trivia online? What is the nature of this addiction? Is it just that the internet demands only a short attention span from its readers? It won't be long before the readers can stop reading entirely by nervously flitting from 2-minute-long video snippet to snippet.
In the past I have tried to explain the weaknesses of books:
What I feel is a mild example of the above. What if the reader of a classic book picked off insightful points that the author glided over too quickly, and then illustrated the point with some experience in his life or some person he once knew?
Typing is a nice outlet for nervous fingers. The reader could type out his little vignette -- maybe just a paragraph or two. Anyone could do that, and it would be constructive. Anything is better than small talk about the weather, Facebook photos of somebody's cat, or postcards.
For instance, when is somebody going to invent, and the rest of society cleave unto, a phrase or word that adequately describes 'drowning in trivia.' Trifles, distraction, minutiae, soul-sucking drivel, and other words are pretty good. But we need something better to express the debasement of human dignity and the utter destruction of the human soul that the internet now offers.
Why do smartphones and drivel-blogs take up so much of our time compared to reading classic books? I was just sitting here reading a classic novel, Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities." I am moderately interested in the book. Why then do I feel this magnetic attraction to switch over to the Trivia online? What is the nature of this addiction? Is it just that the internet demands only a short attention span from its readers? It won't be long before the readers can stop reading entirely by nervously flitting from 2-minute-long video snippet to snippet.
In the past I have tried to explain the weaknesses of books:
- They are non-interactive. Information flows in only one direction.
- Books are too thick. Reading them is slow and tedious.
- Books suffer from the Uninterrupted Prose Syndrome. Is it really too expensive or disreputable to include some illustrations?
- The boob toob viewer had been long-accustomed to feeling a constant state of anxiety and boredom, an endless itch that must be scratched by clicking the channel button.
- People who are young enough to have grown up addicted to video games, lived in constant "twitch mode", requiring diddling the joystick and hitting some button or key to blast some opponent.
- Today people must click boxes on their smartphone screen every few seconds, to refresh the screen with the next ad or piece of trivial information. Otherwise they agonize in a state of nervousness and angst.
What I feel is a mild example of the above. What if the reader of a classic book picked off insightful points that the author glided over too quickly, and then illustrated the point with some experience in his life or some person he once knew?
Typing is a nice outlet for nervous fingers. The reader could type out his little vignette -- maybe just a paragraph or two. Anyone could do that, and it would be constructive. Anything is better than small talk about the weather, Facebook photos of somebody's cat, or postcards.
Comments
The perfect choice of a novel to read at this time!
I think illustrations were quite common in early novels but the cost has become prohibitive. I would think that pictures could be added cheaply enough but that is not the modern fashion. Even when pictures are added to modern novels they are all grouped in the center of the book rather than inserted as part of the story to break up what you describe to be Uninterrupted Prose Syndrome.
I have to say I don't think our times are any worse than the previous 70 years. The 1950s and '60s which people my age too often remember fondly were in fact a nightmare, as in McCarthyism, the Cold War, Korean War, etc., violent racism, and general brutality. (When I was growing up, it was only child abuse if they hit you with the buckle end of the belt and middle class fathers advised their daughters that. if rape was inevitable, to relax and enjoy it. ) Would any clear thinking, sane person really want to relive the years between 1962 and 1975? For that matter, none of us would want to go back to living and working in the 19th century - see Dickens. There never was a golden age in this country or any other, for anybody. Life is hard.
I find that as I age it is difficult to stay tuned to a classic book or anything too deep and serious. There have been/are some exceptions. I search for total escape and mental immersion in well-written crime and mystery books by the likes of Coben, Connelly, Hillerman, Follett, Iles, etc.
What I'm working on at the moment is explaining why the non-intellectual, nervous twitch mode seems to get the upper hand over reading that requires mental effort.
Also, when a youngster is forced to read a classic, he just hasn't experienced enough of life to really appreciate the book.
I don't want to get started on "pulp", "trade", or popular formulas offered as literature by the publishing biz.
I'm admittedly a compulsive reader and in my younger days read voraciously any print I encountered, including cereal boxes, disclaimers, movie cast lists and credit card agreements. Fortunately age and less acute eyesight has at last given me some discrimination, so I'm not about to bother with at least half the books on offer at Kindle Unlimited. Which is to say, Boonie, I'm coming at your question from the opposite direction. Maybe the cure for twitchiness is to make yourself add a few minutes a day to the time you resist it. Sort of self behavioral conditioning?
People avoid pain and that includes the feeling of being made to work for something. So hopping around has the potential of obtaining pleasure with no pain (or work.)
It's an interesting thing about pain. Sometimes pain isn't felt at all, such as a triathlon competitor who is greatly abusing his body but is so focused on the goal that he doesn't notice and so doesn't feel it. And some pain is actually pleasurable and I think you must know about this when you go out for hours at a time cycling off road.
One can be so involved in reading a book that it grabs all their focus just like a triathlon competitor. You don't notice you haven't eaten, etc., one can be so involved in a book. I think that's what Chris is talking about.
Just because something is called a "classic" doesn't mean it's any good. You have made that same comment about some famous art. I have also gazed upon the Mona Lisa and wondered what all the fuss was about.
And when someone is so involved in a book that they forget they haven't eaten, that is actually the same sense of "being possessed" as the person flipping from this to that on their smart phone. THEIR theme has remained the same; they simply have to hop around to achieve it. The person who stays with the book, is getting the same sense of "being possessed" but simply can achieve it within the drama of the novel. Again, pleasure with no work.
"Just because something is called a "classic" doesn't mean it's any good." Indeed, but just because it ISN'T a classic doesn't mean that it is any good, either. The fact is that one needs some sort or filter in order to find worthwhile books in a short lifetime. I find that a list of classics is a flawed, but useful, filter.
What would you have me use instead? The New York Times best-seller list? The book that is in the window or on its own table at the Barnes and Noble book store?
Try this for a filter. Select the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner for some year, let us say the year you were born. Read it. Then read everything, in chronological order, that that author wrote starting with his first book. Some books may not be fiction but read everything. Then move on to the next year, either forward or back.
I did so for many years and read some very good fiction and some very bad fiction but always had a list of books to read.
Anyway, it's a small book and won't crowd your space or weigh you down.
I'm puzzled by "the physical act of reading." Do you mean you dislike the physical inactivity that reading requires?