 Bookmark Now:
Writing in Unreaderly Times
Edited by Kevin Smokler
Basic Books, 2005
Reviewed by Alex Boyd
Editor Kevin Smokler explains in his
introduction to Bookmark Now that the voices behind these essays
were encouraged as a response to Reading at Risk, a National
Endowment for the Arts report that warned literary reading is in
sharp decline in favour of the internet, TV and video games. Responses
were swift and alarmed, but not often complex or useful: literary types
should regroup and push on with the idea of convincing people to read,
as though it’s an unpleasant pill to swallow. I admit it’s hard to
think of ways to sell reading to non-readers. And daily life can be
discouraging, even without gloomy media blurbs. I work in an office
where a few hundred people pass through every day, and at the end of the
day I can count on one hand the number of people who waited with a book
rather than an electronic device. As a writer, this has the advantage of
keeping you humble and connected with the real world, and the
disadvantage of feeling you love to do something increasingly obscure.
Announcing at a party that you’re a poet would get the same reaction
as announcing you’re fond of researching Viking rituals. So, writers
need dialogue and reassurance in times of change, or even the best of
times. Smokler suggests it’s only a traditional approach that leaves
us upset: "If online reading was eating away at book reading, how
did we explain literary weblogs that command thousands of readers a day,
or book recommendations and dialogue as crucial features in the next
generations of social software?"
The majority of essays here are
thoughtful and articulate, if seemingly arbitrary in terms of what
aspect of the literary life they approach. Adam Johnson notes, "the
key to learning is a repository of humility, and it is for posturing
against this that I most fault the myths of being an artist." Paul
Collins writes an account of being unexpectedly moved in a library
during research: "By the late 1870s, though, I noticed the writing
getting shakier and less frequent until, one day, it stopped altogether…
I pulled my Walkman headphones off and sat there a moment. The volumes
sat on my desk, mute, and I looked up from them, through the library
windows, and at the clouds drifting by. I realized that my silent
companion had died. And – absurdly, I know – I felt a little pang,
even though I never knew his name, and he died a hundred years before I
was born." Here we find something wrapped up in the dreams of any
writer: to move someone a hundred years after death. Benjamin Nugent
questions our tendency to push workloads to the breaking point, warning
"it’s a trend that works to deprive us of the poem by the doctor
about her patients, the novel by the judge about the defendant."
A few writers wander away from the
point, into territory that’s more personal and less relevant. Kelley
Eskridge and Nicola Griffith take turns writing each other in a piece
that finally resonates most strongly with their dedication to the
relationship. This is all perfectly admirable, but not terribly useful
for the rest of us. And the exchange threatens to exclude the reader,
complete with a "fuck you" for a particular kind of question
about competitiveness between them.
Finally, the essays of Tom Bissell and
Douglas Rushkoff are right on topic in addressing literacy in a changing
world. "Human culture keeps producing newer and technologically
cannier things with which to distract itself," notes Bissell, and
we may be creating "a culture literally afraid of
interiority." Clearly, some do leap to create the technological
umbilical cord, preferring cell phones to being alone with thoughts.
Bissell stops short of suggesting cultural changes, only observing
"love of digital distraction needs fortification with something
that appreciates and rewards the inner life." But how do you teach
people to appreciate that inner life when they’re afraid of it? For
every skilled poet, there are a few heavily financed teams of
advertisers. In a reassuring set of observations, Rushkoff shows how our
fears can be short sighted: he compares a publisher’s refusal to
release free electronic versions of books to record executives in the
1930s who forbade radio stations use of recordings out of fear they’d
lose sales. And he notes that digital media won’t completely replace
the book, because "a new medium only replaces an old one if it does
everything better." The VHS cassette didn’t put theatres out of
business but enhanced what we like about them, and reminded us why we
go, "giant screens, THX sound, glamorous lobbies, and an evening
out of the house." You can’t take your digital media into the
bath, or snuggle up with it properly, and anything you really cherish
you’d want on paper, which does support his argument that some would
read a few chapters of a book online and then go out and buy it.
There is optimism inherent in these
dedicated voices, and humour. Literature isn’t a precious, endangered
species here. Reading the book is like having a few pints with these
writers, spending time with like-minded folks and hearing about why they
love what they do, and find it fascinating. Tara Bray Smith communicates
the pleasure of reading so warmly I wanted to invite her to dinner just
to hang out. Neal Pollack tells of an exchange that began with him
receiving an anonymous email that read, in its entirety, "Neal
Pollack is a dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick licker."
Howard Hunt reveals a delightful line he read and has carried for years,
describing the experience of interviewing Christopher Walken:
"Fiddling with his lemons, he seems to repel conversation."
And regardless of how directly they tackle the issue of a decline in
literary reading, these pieces speak to the issue just by existing,
written by articulate, passionate and relatively young writers who all
felt the power and gravity of writing despite other distractions. Do
these essays settle the matter? No, but it’s more important to begin
the matter. The book may not be strong on tangible suggestions for
change, but Smokler wisely recognizes it would have been fairly ironic
for a book tackling this subject to be dull and preachy. It’s more
important to stop for a deep breath first and recognize that the end is
not nigh. We may not know what reading will compete with next, or how
its weird marriage to technology will turn out, but it’s reassuring to
hear from these voices that give a damn.
Alex Boyd
is a Toronto writer. |
