Does Anyone Else See the Problem Here?

We all know that e-books are outselling hard copies.  We all know that fewer and fewer people are actually reading: e-books or otherwise.  But, this news story has me absolutely flabbergasted.

BBC News - Disappearing ink gives books in Argentina read by date
Disappearing ink gives books in Argentina read by date 25 September 2012 Last updated at 16:18 GMT Help A publishing company in Argentina has begun printing books with ink that fades away after just two months. Publishers hope readers will be inspired to finish off their books quickly, rather than leaving them languishing on shelves forever. Tom Santorelli reports.

The first problem I see is that if you spend anywhere from $15 to $45 on a book, you aren't going to want the ink to disappear.  What if you don't have time to read the whole thing in that two months?  You just lost your investment, or you have a very expensive journal with the cover or an unfinished book.

Another problem has to do with re-reading.  A person obviously can't re-read a book if the ink has vanished.  While it may inspire a sprint read to finish it in those two months, what happens if it is a book you want to return to, to slowly chew on and think about.  That is not an option with this kind of book, evidently.

While there are probably many problems with this idea, one that will hit the sellers of books the hardest is this: people will not buy as many books.  I'll rephrase that.  Book sells will decline rapidly.  They will fall drastically because people will be less motivated to buy several books at once; instead, they will purchase a book at a time.  AND, if they fail to finish one of these two-month books, they will be even less motivated to buy another.  They will begin to see that they are wasting not only their time, but their money.

I for one would have shelves of worthless, unreadable books.  I read everyday, but I also have a rather large and ever growing to-be-read collection, and more importantly, a to-read-again collection.  If the ink is going to vanish, I may as well not plan my reading; maybe I'll stop reading and start watching TV.  Yeah, that's gonna happen.

I'm not saying boycott these books, but I am suggesting that you think about the repercussions and the consequences of buying them.

Think About It

Review of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Faulkner was not afraid to break from mundane and predictable writing; that which later leads to obscurity. If you are looking for a nice point A-to-point B type story, this is not it. This leans more toward something like a mixture of his other work and Joyce/Woolf amalgamation. Yes, it has that in it (stream of consciousness writing). That said, it isn't Joyce or Woolf. It is Faulkner rollicking in the intoxicating power of words, at the height of his game. I love it because of that. Stick with it and you will see that there is a method to the madness; it is not for the faint of heart, to be sure (please excuse the cliché); it requires breaking out of the trained-laziness that much of contemporary literature and internet reading is breeding in us.

On that note, it is disheartening and nauseating to read about people who get bored because there wasn't tension in the previous two sentences, or because an author wants to take some time and really have a play with language. Editors, agents, publishers, writing gurus all spew the same thing: tension, tension, tension. It's as if the entire world is suffering from learned ADHD (not to take that disease lightly: I struggle with this condition myself, so I understand the pain it can cause; but, we cannot allow it to govern everything: i.e. make literature easier, more exciting, tension, tension, tension; but instead, we must make ourselves stick to something and why shouldn't that something be great works of literature?). If this is to change, we have to change it. Reading great literature requires sacrifice and sometimes it requires breaking out of the the blasé expectations of how literature "ought to be." "Oughts" are very ugly things....

Faulkner's writing, especially in this case, is more art than craft. Many of his other works are very tight, craft-wise (as is The Sound and the Fury; but it's tight in its own way: i.e. when there is what seems like a lot of jumping around, it really should not bother a contemporary reader, whose attention span has been hacked down to nearly nil by television and internet; this part of the book is very much like a movie: quickly switching from scene to scene, bringing into the reading the dizzying effect that the character is experiencing on the page).

The Sound and the Fury is one of Faulkner's more difficult books and didn't really catch on until after he had published Sanctuary. It isn't my favorite of those I've read of his works, but it is a strong book and has a lot to recommend it: chief being the way Faulkner plays with language and builds his characters.

Don't give up, it's worth the time you put into it.

View all my reviews
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In Shakespeare's Defense

Shakespeare is one of  the best writers of all time. Of course that is my opinion, but there are many who share it. He has inspired and influenced myriad writers, and his works have been re-done, made into movies, told in different ways, plots stolen, characters pilfered. Much as Shakespeare has done, has been done unto him.

Why are others from the late 1500 and early 1600's not adapted as much as Shakespeare?  D'uh! The reason nobody else from that time is being regularly adapted, is because they were too ordinary. Yes, they may have been popular at the time, but they did not also simultaneously reach a high character-driven level of literature.

Shakespeare is one of the most serious writers I have ever come across. He went away from his family, his home: to act, then to write. How many writers do that today? They usually read in one of the writing magazines about how they can balance their writing and personal life, then they try it until the next article comes out telling them they need to have their space. For Shakespeare there seems to be no difference between the personal and the writing life. He was a writer, first and foremost.

Shakespeare is still going because he was able to write many plays that (had they been written today) could be considered popular fiction, but at the same time he was able to write at a level of literary above any before or since.

I think people want to stop reading Shakespeare simply because they are too lazy to learn to read the Elizabethan English.  They fail to see the variety of characters that come alive in Shakespeare's works.  I know no writer today who is able to achieve the high level of popularity, as he did in the theatre: and, at the same time, have such realistic characters and the ability to make his audience suspend disbelief in those situations where that is necessary.  And on top of all that, maintain his level of output.  It just isn't being done.

Shakespeare has plenty to say to us, if we will take the iGarbage away from our ears and faces for five minutes and actually pay attention.  This is the trouble: all the tech is causing brain rot.  Soon, we'll all be zombies who won't know how to piss without first consulting an app on our phone.  Jesus!  But that is for another blog post....

All hail the Bard!  Bardolatry for life!

WTF Is This Blog Even About?

I know, I know.  I have no rhyme or reason to my posts.  Well, I do to some of them... Right?
I have a tendency to blog about things that strike me at the moment, and thus require almost immediate comment or they will be lost to the archival darkness and my chance to have my voice heard will be gone.  I know this, because I have let these opportunities slip by uncommented upon too many times.  I'm ashamed, really.

Well ... anyway, often I read a news article or another blog post or hear someone say something while I'm out and about (which is rare, by the way--since I am something of a recluse), and it sparks ideas that I cannot get away from.  So, I start pounding away on this blog.  (That almost sounds naughty).

As you can tell, if you read enough of my posts, there is a sort-of thread or connection.  No, I don't know what it is, but it has to be there, right?  I mean, I'm not doing all this writing for nothing.... am I?  Am I?  Hmmm....  Good question.

The blog is a conglomeration of my thoughts spilled out into words and posted here for all the world to ignore, if they so wish.  Or to read and comment on, if that is more to their liking.  Or to take and make better, which I hope is what happens most.

I am a writer and I write about things that are important to me, about things that move me, about things that make me think or wonder or just shake my head in utter dismay....  For example, my last post about heeding warnings.  How many people ignore those?  Why do they do that?  If I was involved in preparing those warning systems and those people didn't listen and died, and lost their dogs and their homes and their belongings and everything else, it would eat me alive!  I would want to scream from the rooftops, "WHY????"  even if I am a reclusive introvert and don't want that kind of attention.  Lives are important, life is important.

Wow!  I have officially ranted and raved on and have basically said nothing.  If you've read this far, I'm not sure if I should congratulate you or be afraid of you.

Now, a point (which according to all the rules, I should have made much earlier, but, hey, I didn't wanna!): it is writing that ties this blog together.  I'm not published in the strict sense of the word.  Yes, I have this blog and that is a form of being published, but I would be hardpressed to use this as an example of my writing that would win me a book contract with a publisher of books.  That was a clunky sentence, huh?  O well.  This is my place to practice publicly.  You know you can practice writing all you want, but you have to let someone read it.  I mean, what else is the purpose of writing anything other than a diary/journal?

I write because I feel compelled to write.  It drives me.  Most of the time I am writing in a journal, or notebook or working on a novel (that is not in a state to be seen by anyone, yet) and so I have to write a blog post, to get that feeling that someone, anyone, is reading what I write.  It  may sound crazy, because I'm just writing about all kinds of things that are not closely related when I write here, and in my other writing, I am hopefully keeping a cohesion and a tightness in my writing.  But, this is a necessary part of my writing.

This blog is my way of discussing ideas that are important; some of those ideas will eventually end up in my other work, simply because I took the time to hammer out some of the kinks in my thinking right here, for all the world to see.

You have to be getting tired of all this by now, so, I'm shutting up.

Thanks for reading....

Attention Spans Are a Terrible Thing to ... to Something ... I Can't Remember

We should use technology to push our minds to new breadth and new depth. Don't simply give up on the old technology (such as books), especially at the expense of the attention span. Technology should be used to learn about new areas in which to spend more time thinking deeply. But, online reading, online browsing will change our brains to the point that we will have trouble thinking deeply; our attention spans will be incapable of handling that sort of pressure.

What will happen as fewer and fewer books are read; what will happen as fewer and fewer teachers and professors actually require students to read the books assigned? Nicholas Carr interviewed several people for his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains; people who were students, teachers, etc. One philosophy major stands out. He no longer reads actual books. How is that possible? Another interviewee states that he is no longer able to read War and Peace. (That may not be a fair example, because I know plenty of people who make that claim and it has nothing to do with attention span). For that person, Tolstoy's novel is too long and complex. That is disheartening. People are allowing themselves to be changed to such a degree, by reading online -- only online -- that they can no longer enjoy complex and tedious tasks. Their brains are changed. Literally.

Already, people are more impatient than they used to be, in general. (No, I don't have any statistics for that, it is a personal observation). Is that the kind of world we want to live in? A world filled with impatient people who are incapable of thinking deeply?

Think about it.... if you still can.

Attention Contention

Publishers and editors seem to suffer from what appears to be adult ADHD (Disclaimer: I am not a psych doctor, so I can't make this diagnosis for real).  They press new writers to maintain constant tension for their potential readers; keep the pressure on, keep them turning pages; in other words, don't bore them with anything that might strain their weak, failing, meager attention spans.

It won't be long that novels will have to be the length of short stories and short stories will have to be one word that captures the entire emotional and psychological life of a character: e.g. Jesus wept.

I contend that we, as humans, as readers, as writers, have the responsibility to rebel against the publishers and editors, for the sake of our children and their children.  Attention spans are quickly becoming endangered and if something drastic is not done, will follow the Dodo into extinction.

Reading Genius

"The genius of our brain's construction is not that it contains 

a lot of hardwiring but that it doesn't." 

- Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, 31.

It's not bad enough that television kicked our attention spans' collective asses, but it prepared the way for an all out annihilation to it, which has come in the form of the internet.  Email, social media, IM: these all play a part in distracting our minds from whatever productive task we have on our TO DO lists.  Cory Doctorow, as quoted by Carr, writes that "leaving your IM running is like sitting down to work after hanging a giant 'DISTRACT ME' sign over your desk, one that shines brightly enough to be seen by the entire world."  When I think of the telephone ringing, the doorbell sounding, the dogs barking at something only they can hear, the thought of having another potential distraction is more than irksome.

I'm going to say that Carr, in The Shallows, makes some rather sobering points regarding the internet's changing of the human brain.  And, as he passingly mentions, the answer is obviously not to stop using the internet at all costs.  Luddites have a difficult time uniting, with their lack of technology, which is the reason their way of thinking is an exception to actual social acceptance of the  technology they fear and loathe. But I, for one, don't want my brain to be changed in such a way that I am unable to read long, difficult works of literature, and I hope you don't want that for your brain, either.

A good idea, then, is to follow the Buddha; i.e. follow the middle path.  Use the internet to skim information, to grasp the main points of knowledge and to share our own knowledge with others; but, use books and other less distraction prone media for developing depth.  Old fashioned books for depth; new fangled internet for breadth.

Otherwise subsequent generations' attention spans won't be as long as their eye-blinks.

LINKS: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction