Das Interwebz and Ye Olde Bookes
This week's ENG101 reading was from a book called The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. The author, Sven Birkerts, is a literary critic, but first and foremost a lover of books and reading in general. His book strives to warn people about the effect technology is having on reading- not really that people aren't reading anymore, but that they are reading differently, not as deeply, so they miss the subtleties and intricacies of the text, the literary devices like irony and allusion. Because of this they miss out on so much of the collective human experience held in the books through language, the "repository of culture." Books give you the "feeling of life" much more than other media, a subjective view that's often missed in other formats- the human aspect as my mom calls it.
In my class blog I focused on the advent of the Kindle and how it illustrates these points (in my mind, anyway): books are no longer "special" so people can drop off mid-sentence, thus only getting bare-bones plot. And the lack of a physical object the book means you lose that sense of it being part of a larger whole, that "cultural repository." However, here I am going to take the opposite approach: technology- the Internet specifically- can encourage that sort of deep, close reading that Birkerts (and I) so value. Seems hypocritical, and it may be, but hopefully by narrowing the focus of each post (the Kindle [a format for presenting the text] and the Internet [a medium for exploring the text]) that can be lessened. That's a good way to distinguish my feelings, actually: technology is wonderful as a forum for exploring the text, but good old fashion codex form is the best way to present it.
So. It seems odd, but I am going to start this narrative about the Internet and books with a movie: Inception. (Work with me here.) I'd already seen it, but they were showing it on campus this weekend, and I went because I'd enjoyed it, and because my friends were going. Now, that movie can be a bit confusing, if you remember correctly, so I ended up explaining some of the finer points to this girl as we walked back to our dorm. Which, naturally, got me into an analytical mood, and so I turned to TVTropes, that amazing compendium of story tricks of the trade, to find out other people's perspectives and to trace the tropes throughout the film.
TVTropes started with television (as the name suggests) but quickly expanded to include all types of media- webcomics, anime, real life, and, yes, literature. It's my geek paradise, cataloging all the common motifs and character types and narrative devices and... I could go on, but you get the idea. It's the shared knowledge of hundreds, possibly thousands of people like me (and not like me, for new perspectives), and it's a wiki so we can all edit it, respond to each other, flesh out ideas. THAT is why I love the site- seeing all these things discussed, and then that giddy feeling I get when finding them in another work, or bringing them into conversation with my friends.
Without the Internet, TVTropes probably wouldn't exist. Sure, you could start something similar with a group of friends or classmates, but you wouldn't get near the breadth of information that the website provides. And, because I know the tropes, I look for them as I read- this is what is called "critical reading" in school. And lots of us do it for fun, thanks to this website, and others like it.
Take, for example, this one. It's basically a collection of essays (or, they'd be called essays if in printed form) on various aspects of Harry Potter, up to the end of Book 4. What the author is doing is delving deeply into the text, dissecting it, and then putting it back together with his/her own spin. There's places like this all over the Internet- HPLexicon, MuggleNet to an extent; I know; I've visited them, read the essays, gotten even more engrossed in the world the novels create. These essays do exactly what Birkerts says technology takes away from us, and because of technology they inspire others to do the same.
Even fanfic to an extent is about critical reading of the text (or, the best ones are, IMO). You have to understand the characters, why they do things, and understand the world, its rules and values, to write a believable fic. Often you draw on tropes (of the TV variety or just fanon tropes). And we have a whole big fandom- a "collective culture" made by people who have interpreted the text in various ways. (There's an article about this on the site linked above, BTW, if you were interested.)
Now, this is all about "popular" fiction, not Dickens or James or Melville. But the principle is the same- if you are inclined to look, you can find a community that discusses any of those.
I could, obviously, cover many more aspects of the Internet. Like, the linking thing that allows you to view other sources which corroborate or expand upon the original topic (which, as my teacher pointed out, is like when you write an academic paper and cite other sources for information. It's just a different way to do so). And, of course, there are ways the Internet can take away from the "literary life:" social networking or humor sites that are more "interesting" for the layperson and take up time, ability to use it to procrastinate on reading/writing assignments (if you're in school). And, you know, the fact that my hated Kindle gets its e-books from Internet downloads. (This isn't even getting into any other piece/aspect of technology, or the view that movies, webcomics etc ARE texts from a certain point of view (even movies [Disney! blasphemy!] are basically sneered at by Birkerts in that book) and so offer new possibilities for reading/analysis).
But still, there are definite benefits to technology. Besides, the Internet isn't going anywhere, no matter how much people complain about it. So we might as well make use of it and do more to harness the positive things like I've discussed, and more on top of that.
(a note about the tag: I've added a tag called "reading response response." I'm thinking at some point I'm going to transfer all (or most) of the entries from the Glog to here, and they will be tagged "reading response." And thus, you get these entries, as responses to what I wrote in my reading responses. Make sense?)
In my class blog I focused on the advent of the Kindle and how it illustrates these points (in my mind, anyway): books are no longer "special" so people can drop off mid-sentence, thus only getting bare-bones plot. And the lack of a physical object the book means you lose that sense of it being part of a larger whole, that "cultural repository." However, here I am going to take the opposite approach: technology- the Internet specifically- can encourage that sort of deep, close reading that Birkerts (and I) so value. Seems hypocritical, and it may be, but hopefully by narrowing the focus of each post (the Kindle [a format for presenting the text] and the Internet [a medium for exploring the text]) that can be lessened. That's a good way to distinguish my feelings, actually: technology is wonderful as a forum for exploring the text, but good old fashion codex form is the best way to present it.
So. It seems odd, but I am going to start this narrative about the Internet and books with a movie: Inception. (Work with me here.) I'd already seen it, but they were showing it on campus this weekend, and I went because I'd enjoyed it, and because my friends were going. Now, that movie can be a bit confusing, if you remember correctly, so I ended up explaining some of the finer points to this girl as we walked back to our dorm. Which, naturally, got me into an analytical mood, and so I turned to TVTropes, that amazing compendium of story tricks of the trade, to find out other people's perspectives and to trace the tropes throughout the film.
TVTropes started with television (as the name suggests) but quickly expanded to include all types of media- webcomics, anime, real life, and, yes, literature. It's my geek paradise, cataloging all the common motifs and character types and narrative devices and... I could go on, but you get the idea. It's the shared knowledge of hundreds, possibly thousands of people like me (and not like me, for new perspectives), and it's a wiki so we can all edit it, respond to each other, flesh out ideas. THAT is why I love the site- seeing all these things discussed, and then that giddy feeling I get when finding them in another work, or bringing them into conversation with my friends.
Without the Internet, TVTropes probably wouldn't exist. Sure, you could start something similar with a group of friends or classmates, but you wouldn't get near the breadth of information that the website provides. And, because I know the tropes, I look for them as I read- this is what is called "critical reading" in school. And lots of us do it for fun, thanks to this website, and others like it.
Take, for example, this one. It's basically a collection of essays (or, they'd be called essays if in printed form) on various aspects of Harry Potter, up to the end of Book 4. What the author is doing is delving deeply into the text, dissecting it, and then putting it back together with his/her own spin. There's places like this all over the Internet- HPLexicon, MuggleNet to an extent; I know; I've visited them, read the essays, gotten even more engrossed in the world the novels create. These essays do exactly what Birkerts says technology takes away from us, and because of technology they inspire others to do the same.
Even fanfic to an extent is about critical reading of the text (or, the best ones are, IMO). You have to understand the characters, why they do things, and understand the world, its rules and values, to write a believable fic. Often you draw on tropes (of the TV variety or just fanon tropes). And we have a whole big fandom- a "collective culture" made by people who have interpreted the text in various ways. (There's an article about this on the site linked above, BTW, if you were interested.)
Now, this is all about "popular" fiction, not Dickens or James or Melville. But the principle is the same- if you are inclined to look, you can find a community that discusses any of those.
I could, obviously, cover many more aspects of the Internet. Like, the linking thing that allows you to view other sources which corroborate or expand upon the original topic (which, as my teacher pointed out, is like when you write an academic paper and cite other sources for information. It's just a different way to do so). And, of course, there are ways the Internet can take away from the "literary life:" social networking or humor sites that are more "interesting" for the layperson and take up time, ability to use it to procrastinate on reading/writing assignments (if you're in school). And, you know, the fact that my hated Kindle gets its e-books from Internet downloads. (This isn't even getting into any other piece/aspect of technology, or the view that movies, webcomics etc ARE texts from a certain point of view (even movies [Disney! blasphemy!] are basically sneered at by Birkerts in that book) and so offer new possibilities for reading/analysis).
But still, there are definite benefits to technology. Besides, the Internet isn't going anywhere, no matter how much people complain about it. So we might as well make use of it and do more to harness the positive things like I've discussed, and more on top of that.
(a note about the tag: I've added a tag called "reading response response." I'm thinking at some point I'm going to transfer all (or most) of the entries from the Glog to here, and they will be tagged "reading response." And thus, you get these entries, as responses to what I wrote in my reading responses. Make sense?)