There are, perhaps a little ironically, written records of ancient Greeks raised in the oral tradition decrying the rise of the written word as the death knell of good memory.
I think there’s always going to be some evolution of how knowledge is passed on and that the “one right way” myth is sort of provincial, but at the same time, transitioning to a new medium can take a real toll on those raised in prior mediums, and recognizing that gives us a chance to maybe retreat back to our patio rocking chair and take a break.
In comparison, I find it to be true of certain filmmakers, too. Having had a concentration in film and media studies, I’ve watched a ton of film (even from my professor/artist-in-residence Harun Farocki), but the one director who always put me to sleep was Godard (also one of Farocki’s favorite topics).
I actually think i read more these days, even if its not literary works. But as far as books go, i’ve definitely stopped reading them often because i can’t afford to buy books, and the unread books that i do have i haven’t picked up yet because i don’t have the time or i’m not in the mood to commit to them. Still need to finish Seveneves and then i gotta jump back into another series i’ve had on hold for the last few years.
Before the print press people would actually memorize books as they would lend/borrow valuable books so access to these books were not easy, it’s a memory technique that was fairly common since the Greeks but extremely rare these days with exception of memory athletes. I forget where i saw a video that talked about that, let me see… (couldn’t find the video but here’s some links)
I tried this once when I studied biochemistry using Mincraft to build a track that would take me through the metabolic pathways. I still remember glycoloysis really well but that’s because building the track was so time consuming I only built one.
If you want a cure, read a couple victorian novels. After that, your run of the mill modern novel will feel fast paced and exciting again. Ease your way in with Jerome K. Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat”, then drop off by reading anything else he wrote. Or just jump down the hole with “Griefenstien” by F. Marion Crawford. Or try some non Sherlock Doyle.
It’s like playing a lot of snooker, then moving to a boston pool table, or playing a lot of Go and then moving back to chess. Speed is relative don’t you know. (not saying Go is slow- but chess feels easy after)
That reminds me off the Book People in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury which, as you probably already know, is the source of the name of our Austin chain of second-hand bookshops Book People.
Thanks for the links. Bookmarked (heh ) for later enjoyment.
Oh, and I think I’m right about you being ahead of the curve, because post-Baroque Stepehnson novels are a prime example of the books I love but struggle to get through where once I could burn right through them.
Well… I dunno: maybe it’s already been said, i didn’t read all the comments - but there’s a lot of language that is dated, cumbersome, and really not that readable. I tried reading Magister Ludi years and years ago - before this internet fad really took off ifyouknowhatimeanwhichisthati’mold - and it was cumbersome then. It was dense and actually sorta boring.
But you could pick up Mark twain and it pulls you right in. Ernest Hemmingway. John Steinbeck. There’s so many others from the early 20th C who didn’t specialize in the kind of denseness of writing that was Hesse.
I read The Dispossessed by Ursula K Leguin just recently (excellent read BTW) and it was remarkable the way that it had a timeless cadence. It was clean and efficient.
I don’t think ‘blaming the internet’ is the answer here. It’s simply that tastes and vocabularies change. And, likewise, what we want out of writing that we read. I mean, how ‘readable’ is Homer’s Odyssey at this point? Or Dante’s Inferno?
Are you a teacher? My support and condolances to you. Your career efforts to teach our children are worth much more than our society attributes to you. Best wishes in your teaching career.
I vaguely recall a complaint from the protagonist in Bartleby the Scrivener that a day of work reading telegraph messages and writing ledger entries had warped his mind. Another reason to quit Twitter.
I’d like to get more into Stephenson, i like Seveneves but it’s been a little bit of a chore to get through. Not a bad reading experience by any stretch of the imagination but its the first book of his that i’ve read and i’m not used to this particular style of writing. I’ve heard great things about his earlier books so i’ll circle back to him once i’m in the market to buy more books. My next book will likely be the Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin, also not familiar with the writer but i heard good things about the book.
I managed to avoid the vogue for Hesse back in the day, but there is the fact that whenever you read him, you’re reading a translation. I not only read Homer and Dante as a teenager but included the latter (in Ciardi’s translation) in an undergrad general-studies English course more than 30 years ago. My wife still teaches Homer–and Ovid–in a myth & legend course. Good, vivid translations of most classics are available all over the place.
(FWIW, I tore through earlier Stephenson novels–I have a special fondness for the Baroque Cycle.)
I remember reading James Fenimore Cooper in school and practically pulling my hair out. Hemingway, in contrast, actually got to the freakin’ point. I’m just over halfway through the unabridged The Count of Monte Cristo and I’m stalled. The section I’m in is just so pointless. The early novel has good pacing but it really bogged down in the middle. I know there’s some good payoff coming; I just can’t slog through the crap to get there.
To echo your point: communication has advanced significantly over the centuries, just as technology has. Writers have increased the density of information they convey through technique that is passed along very efficiently simply through reading other’s works.
So western civilization took 2500 years to develop the rhetorical technology that delivered Hemingway*, Twitter, the pictographic user manual, and Fifty Shades of Grey?
[*] Whose contemporary, Faulkner, operates in exactly the same mode?
) for later enjoyment.
