Ursula K. Le Guin on the “crass stupidity” of corporations
Noted sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin weighs in on what she calls the “alleged decline of reading” in a feature essay in the February issue of Harper’s. The article begins with a predictable litany of lamentable reading stats, but then takes the debate in a whole new direction, squaring the blame for reading’s decline on publishers, not readers.
Books are social vectors, but publishers have been slow to see it. They barely even noticed book clubs until Oprah goosed them. But then the stupidity of the contemporary, corporation-owned publishing company is fathomless: they think they can sell books as commodities.
The essay, available only to subscribers, is equally sharp, witty, and angry throughout, though Le Guin’s conclusion that we’d all be better off if “corporate” publishers dumped their literary imprints does seem a little rash. Still, her rhetoric is fine, rabble-rousing stuff.
The New Yorker had a similar article in their Dec 24 issue. The author, Caleb Crain, made the classic error of assuming that a decline in book reading over the past many decades could be interpreted to represent an overall decline in reading. There was little consideration for the fact that many people spend huge chunks of time each day reading and writing on the Internet. Arguably, the average person seems, at least anecdotally, to be much more engaged with the written language today than they were ten years ago. I suppose it is just a matter of time before we all have usb ports in our heads and can download all that data straight from some server, but till then, text is still the main mode of communication on the web. The real problem for writers and publishers is that the vast majority of it is free.
p.s. case in point:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain?currentPage=2
I have read neither article, so perhaps it is premature for me to jump in, but I will anyway.
Shaun said “There was little consideration for the fact that many people spend huge chunks of time each day reading and writing on the Internet. Arguably, the average person seems, at least anecdotally, to be much more engaged with the written language today than they were ten years ago.”
That is an indisputable fact. People are reading more. Tons more. Oceans more. But what rarely gets considered when talking about this is the QUALITY of the reading. (No, I don’t mean the quality of the writing, I mean the reading.)
I wonder if all that disconnected reading, all that skimming of often poorly written material, doesn’t have an effect on how we absorb and process what we read. Generally speaking (and I do mean “generally,”) Internet reading is more about acquiring data. Book reading, which is typically a slower, longer, and more involved process, is about many things besides, including pleasure, entertainment, learning, reflection, etc.
I wrote about this on my blog a couple of years ago, where I lamented the huge quantity of reading that some of my peers are doing, and what I observed as a reduction in their ability to really understand what they read, or take nuance from it. I quote (myself):
“How can anyone read with nuance at that rate? It must be like spending an hour racing through the Louvre and registering only “picture of house; picture of human; odd-shaped piece of wood; photo of dog.””
The entire post is here:
http://www.blork.org/blorkblog/2005/06/16/on-writing-and-reading/