Wordwork|play

Reading Satire

The ONION features a neat satire on reading entitled "Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book." It's quite funny on the surface, but points to a disturbing move away from books, especially among the younger generations. Many young people no longer have the requisite attention span to read books. They seem to need a continuous stream of stimuli, of sound bytes and visual flickers. In our always-on, plugged-in, virtually networked and technologically connected culture, there is no shortage thereof. There's lots of money to be made from a generation trained to be in constant 'need' of fresh stimuli and new, or newly packaged, products.

On the topic of books, here's another sad commentary. And here yet another. We laugh at all of them for the same reason that we laugh when poked in the ribs (I'll leave that analogy for you to think about for now).

On Old Books, Fungus, and Inspiration

What's not to love about books? I have always loved books. I love the feel of books, the look of books, and yes, the smell of books. Particularly old books. The older the better--old books look, feel and smell better than modern ones.

Oh how I love hanging out in and walking through library stacks (read about the long history of libraries here), inhaling deeply the musty smell of old books. For that, and the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of course, I miss university life. I used to think I liked the smell of books for psychological reasons--I love the idea of books, therefore I like the smell of books. But an article I came across recently suggests something more physical.

Ellen Warren writes, in the Chicago Tribune, that there may well be more to getting high on great literature than the love of literature or learning itself. In "Book Fungus Can Get You High," Warren writes that "[e]xperts on the various fungi that feed on the pages and on the covers of books are increasingly convinced that you can get high - or at least a little wacky-by sniffing old books. Fungus on books, they say, is a likely source of hallucinogenic spores." Hmm. So that could explain some of the great works of literature--the authors, spending hours upon hours in dank libraries full of old books, especially in the days before high-tech humidity control, got high off fungus spores. Their inspiration may have come from what they were inspiring (breathing in).

I really need to surround myself with more old books. Take a good whiff of old book, then get back to the computer to write. That may be another downside of digital literature--no hallucinogenic fungus to inspire.

The Life of a Creative Offering: Independent and yet Dependent

I was doing some research on Ecotecture (word-blend of ecology and architecture) and came across the following quote from Picasso that can be equally well applied to literature--to poetry, short stories, and novels.

A picture is not thought out and settled before hand. While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing the changes imposed on us by our life from day to day. This is natural enough, as the picture lives only through the man who is looking at it.

Picasso from a 1935 interview with Christian Zervos. (found at Ecotecture Canada)

A work of fiction is the same way. No matter how much thought and effort a writer may have put into a story-- perhaps growing it out of, and around, an overarching concept or leitmotif, forming and refining characters, laying out plot elements, and then revising, refining, focusing, clarifying, culling, and polishing--to bring it to life, as soon as it is published and out of the author's hands, out of the author's control, it begins a life of its own. It is an independent, living creature. As long as it has a reader, it is alive. But it grows and changes.

People change from childhood into adulthood, and continue to change and grow and be modified by the impact of life experience. People change when they cross national, cultural, religious, linguistic and political borders, even if certain core elements remain relatively fixed. And so it is also with the work of fiction. Even if unchanged in a literal sense, an ancient Arabic, Greek, Indian, Persian, or Roman story, an Old English or Norse poem, or for that matter a Victorian, or even modernist novel, is a different creature now. It no longer means what it did in its own time and place. It has a life of its own, but is utterly dependent upon the reader. The author gives it birth, but it is the reader alone who keeps it alive, the reader alone who nurtures it, changes it, and sometimes revives it.

Ipsos Reid Study on Readers in Canada: 31% Read Not a Single Book in Past Year

I was alerted by the Literary Saloon to an Ipsos Reid survey commissioned by CanWest News Service and Global Television. According to the study which surveyed 1001 people across Canada, 31% of adults across Canada had not read a single book in the past year. A similar poll conducted in the U.S. found 27% of adults there had not picked up a book in the past year. I don't like to get too much into Canada/U.S. rivalries, but I am a bit surprised that Canada was behind the U.S. in this regard. I suppose I thought of Canadians, on the whole, as a bit more educated, literate and, well, reading, than this study reveals.

Interestingly, as Misty Harris reports in Canadian book readers fall behind the U.S.: poll at canada.com, the 69% of Canadians who said they did read in 2007, did so voraciously, reading an average of 20 books a year. And what I find even more interesting is the regional variations across Canada: B.C. residents read about 33 books a year, Atlantic Canada 22, Ontario 19, Alberta 18, Quebec 16, and Manitoba/Saskatchewan 15 books. What I find disturbing is that, at least as reported in Harris' article, the Eastern provinces are lumped all together, instead of being listed separately (Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island), and the Territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) are not included at all.

We seem to be surprised, and perhaps embarrassed, every time such a report comes out. There is much talk of declining literacy, especially among members of a generation increasingly caught up in the pop culture world of the internet (facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc.), and gadgets like iPods and cell phones, a world often shallow, consumer-driven, and wetterwendisch.

Educators certainly notice (I was one, briefly, and have also had many conversations with professors on the matter), from elementary school through university, a deterioration of language, critical thinking, and research skills. Information has become easily accessible, but is spread out wide and shallow like manure, and many young people no longer learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of the available and frequently accessed and referenced information is packaged as democratized knowledge (see Wikipedia), a dangerous concept that sounds good on the surface but can easily slide down the slippery slope towards truthiness (1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005); 2 : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006).

But according to Janet Eger, a spokeswoman for Indigo Books, "readership in the Canadian market is remaining steady." A much more interesting and revealing question, I think, is what it is people are reading, and the quality of what is being read. According to the Ipsos Reid survey, fiction was the most popular genre among Canadians last year, at 56% of those who had read at least one book. Mysteries and thrillers were also at 56%, while non-fiction books were at 46%. (Is there something odd about these percentages?) How much, I wonder, of the fiction being read is formulaic fluff. That is certainly the bulk of what I see people reading on buses, trains and waiting rooms. Literacy may well be on the decline, even if readership isn't. Maybe people are reading just as much as they have for generations, but are reading less of quality and substance, reaching instead for the easy, escapist, entertaining fluff that kills time and tickles the mind but doesn't require much independent thought and engagement with the text. There is, of course, a place for genre fiction, and some of it does tackle more substantive issues that demand engagement and stimulate deeper thought.

Holiday Productivity

I haven't posted or published anything in a few days, aside from NODs. My day job has kept me rather busy the past week in preparation for the holidays, leaving little time or energy for reading or writing. Though I will spend some time with family over the holidays, I hope to get at least one review written and published, that of Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets, and get some reading done as well.

I don't celebrate Christmas. And I don't accept the oft-advanced argument that Christmas -- a holiday imposed on all of us through the audiovisual pollution of flashing lights and tinseled trees, Christmas carols, product pushing and the cheery-fake 'Merry Christmas' -- is merely a cultural affair. It is not. It is a Christian affair and should not, in a society that claims to have secular government and continues to welcome new immigrants from all parts of the world with the promise of religious freedom, equality and multiculturalism, be State-sanctioned. A secular government in a multicultural society should hold no religious event above any other. Either institute official holidays for the significant events and celebrations of all religions or stay out of it altogether!

Since the State is involved in pushing Christianity by making Christmas an official holiday, I choose to take advantage of the extra time to withdraw, as much as possible, from all things Christmas-y to get some reading and writing done. Of course I take advantage of any holiday to relax a little with good food, drink and company. However, the list of upcoming books for review is getting longer than I like to see it and there is some exciting reading (and listening) ahead. After Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets I get to immerse myself in Al Young's Something About the Blues.

Time, Money & Medieval Literature: A New Translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation

As mentioned in the lead-in to a recent post, "Texts in Translation: Kalima and Translation into Arabic," I have more than a passing interest in, and fascination with, medieval literature, as also with translation. But because I am overburdened with student debt, still, I have neither the time nor money to pursue this interest in earnest. Certainly not by way of another university degree--my three have nearly buried me in debt. But on to the matter of this post.

I came across a review of a new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the "Sunday Book Review" of the New York Times a few days ago--"A Stranger in Camelot." Though I prefer to read such texts in the original, in this case Middle English, I do understand the need for modern English translations that render the text intelligible to readers who struggle overmuch with older forms of English. Many, perhaps most, high school and university students today struggle even with Shakespearean English, so one cannot really expect them to tackle even earlier stuff.

I haven't read this translation yet, though I hope to do so in the near future. Apparently Armitage presents the Middle English original in a parallel text, much like Seamus Heaney did in Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, a copy of which I have and treasure in my personal library. When a new translation reproduces, as nearly as possible, the spirit and cadence of the original text, it is a joy to read and gives the modern reader a feel for the original. Especially important, as pointed out by Edward Hirsch, is an adequate reproduction of alliteration, the poetic device of choice in early English writing. I, personally, much prefer alliteration and assonance to rhyme as a poetic constraint.

The linguistically adventurous can read the new translation, then work their way through the original. Fun, fun, fun!

Slow Reading, the Book, and New Media

I came across an interesting article, again at Inside Higher Ed, entitled "Blind, Deaf and Dumb." I read the beginning with great interest. I also feel that too much of our lives is sped up too much, and that this also applies to higher education, something I've touched on before (see Research: taking the time to read thoroughly). Students often have little time to truly engage with their reading materials, to read deliberately, thoroughly, and widely. They often feel compelled, when doing research for a research paper, for example, to use tables of contents and indices to find only what they feel is immediately relevant to their argument. This obviously leaves them open to taking things out of context. It also makes for an impoverished reading and learning experience.

I think I understand what Musgrove was getting at when discussing certain students' inability to relate to the text--to see, hear and speak about the text meaningfully. But that is, I think, little different from the blank stare and incoherent stammer exhibited by some (generally older) people when confronted with a computer, cellphone, or iPod. It has to do with familiarity and literacy. His choice of words were, however, rather unfortunate.

Though I also have a certain attachment to the physical book, I think we must be open to new media. The book was, just a few hundred years ago, a new medium. What we need to do is to continue tinkering with the medium to make it as useful as we can (the use of electronic paper helps), and make enough use of it to forget the medium and engage the text. Who gives any thought to the physical book when truly engrossed in the text?

Covering Academic Books in Newspaper Books Sections?

I came across an interesting post yesterday on Inside Higher Ed about a new approach to book coverage in a newspaper. Apparently The Austin American-Statesman is trying a new niche to get people into reading--covering books from academic presses.

I was really surprised that a mainstream paper would try this when books sections are disappearing or shrinking in newspapers across North America. And their niche is academic books, not the newest genre fiction, which I could see as a more popular sort of thing--genre fiction is mostly what I see people on buses and subways and offices reading. I hope this catches on though, at least in university towns across North America.

Texts in Translation: Kalima and Translation into Arabic

I find translation fascinating. I once considered, but, for reasons I will not delve into here, did not pursue a graduate degree at the Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Toronto that would likely have led me to translation work. My intended foci were Latin, Old English, and Old Norse, possibly in collaboration with Editing Medieval Texts or Book History & Print Culture. Will I revisit these interests at some point? Maybe. But I'm digressing.

There is, of course, nothing essentially modern about translation. As long as written languages have existed and peoples using distinct languages have interacted and/or ruled one another, there has quite likely been translation. There are some very old examples of bi- or multilingual writings (see the bilingual edict of Ashoka--Greek & Aramaic--located in present-day Afghanistan, erected circa 230 B.C.E., for one example). The spread of religion--esp. Buddhism, Christianity, & Islam--and the rise and fall and shifting boundaries of empires--Greek, Roman, Persian, Arab, and later Spanish, Ottoman and British--also resulted in a flurry of translation. Vast empires are invariably multilingual, at least at first, though some end up imposing one language on all.

Baghdad, during the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258), is said to have had a healthy literary culture and was a vibrant book trade and translation hub. Islam, students of religion and philosophy certainly know, contributed tremendously to the development and flowering of modern Western civilization with philosophical, mathematical, scientific and literary contributions. Today, it would seem, there is little except suspicion, misunderstanding and animosity exchanged between the Arab world and the West. A little of that is hopefully about to change.

I first heard about Kalima and its efforts to translate world literature into Arabic through the Literary Saloon at the complete review. My initial reaction was one of suspicion, ironically. What, I wondered, was the motivation for the translation of literature into Arabic? Why not from Arabic into English and other Western languages? I have since gone to Kalima's web site and read up a bit--about who they are, their objectives, raison d'etre, who supports them and what they have done thus far and plan to do in the coming year--and am impressed.

While I don't see in their list of books already translated and awaiting translation any distinct bias, I do agree with the Literary Saloon's assessment that it's a bit English-heavy. And while translation into Arabic of world literature is a great thing, I really do hope we'll also see more translation of Arabic texts into other languages, especially English, given how dominant it is in world affairs at the moment. There is an obvious need to balance things--there is enough of Western ideas, especially the most frivolous and evanescent ones, making their way around the world via television and, increasingly, internet-driven new media.

Following Developments of E-Ink Technology

For a few years now, I've been watching developments of electronic paper display, or electronic ink technology. I checked the E Ink Corporation web site from time to time, hoping to see products on the market useful to readers and writers. Suddenly now, there seems to be an explosion of devices on the market making use of this technology.

The resolution is not yet very high, and they don't have video or even colour. But being able to carry with you one device about the size of a paperback novel (maybe a little smaller) that can hold hundreds of books, and that, unlike previous generations of e-book readers, despite being digital, is as easy on the eyes as paper, is exciting. Before e-ink, digital books simply were not appealing to me because of the strain on the eyes of looking at a screen. PDAs, though fun, were not viable as readers either, for the same reason.

A recent e-mail from Amazon.com introducing Kindle, their own reader with electronic paper technology, got me going again. Since I cannot afford to go out and purchase it now, especially since I need to research different options first, rather than jumping on the bandwagon with the first product placed under my nose, I will hold off a bit.

What I did do instead of running to the store to purchase Kindle, was a little research. I found the following companies offering readers with electronic ink displays (listed in no particular order):
- Amazon--Kindle
- eREAD--STAReBook
- 3GC, llc (dba. MyAirplane.com)--eFlyBook
- Emano Tec, inc.--MedTab
- iRex Technologies--iLiad
- Polymer Vision--READiUS
- Sony--Sony Reader
- Tianjin Jinke Electronics Co., LTD--Hanlin eReader

If I can arrange it, given my limited income, I shall be reviewing these items here as I can get a hold of them. I normally wouldn't review electronic gadgets on this site, as it is firmly a litblog, but these are alternative book technologies (for reading and writing) and thus directly relevant to this site.