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Thursday, December 17, 2009

Will e-books spell the end of great writing?

How much have our perceptions of reading and writing changed now that you can craft a novel on a laptop and scroll through it on a Nintendo games console? This Christmas could be the moment when our idea of curling up with a fat novel are transformed for ever, says Tim Adams
Two unrelated observations about writing have snagged at my attention in the past couple of days and refused to go away. The first was a quote from Don DeLillo, the author of the great modern epic, Underworld. DeLillo was talking about how he continues to write on a typewriter, and suggested that: "I need the sound of the keys, the keys of a manual typewriter. The hammers striking the page. I like to see the words, the sentences, as they take shape. It's an aesthetic issue: when I work I have a sculptor's sense of the shape of the words I'm making."
The second was an advert in my local Argos for a "game" for the Nintendo DS console that features 100 classic books. The cartridge packaged itself as follows: "100 Classic Book Collection turns your Nintendo DS into a portable library containing must-read novels from iconic authors such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and many more. Hold the DS like a book and use the touch screen to turn the pages. 100 Classic Book Collection allows various search methods such as searching for a book that suits your mood, or a specific requirement such as a short read." The soundtrack that can accompany the reading of these classics includes the canned effect of a crackling log fire.
Somewhere in between these two observations there seemed to be a disconnect, a kind of paradox, but it took me a while to work out where it lay. It had something, of course, to do with the fact that Don DeLillo, the pre-eminent American novelist of the present moment was holding tight to the technology of the past, while the Nintendo technology of the present moment was appropriating the old-fashioned printed world of the novel. But that wasn't it exactly.
It was more about different understandings of the physicality of the act of writing and the act of reading. The makers of the bestselling Nintendo package may believe Shakespeare to be an "iconic author" of "must-read novels" but in describing him as such they betray some of the side-effects of their product – it treats all writing as if it were simply text, content, something else to scroll on a screen to suit your mood. DeLillo, who knows a good deal about the difference between writing and content, clearly resists this idea. Writing for him is a highly physical act; meaning is discovered and shaped in individual words and sentences, and their external form is fundamental to what they are communicating.
This Christmas may well mark the moment when the Nintendo idea of writing – and reading – takes precedence over the DeLillo idea of it. The growth in sales of the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader – which can store thousands of texts, classic and otherwise, and which may eventually provide digital access to every book ever written – suggests that we are at an iPod moment: books, in particular novels, may well be about to face the fate of records and CDs. In America, Google is currently fighting a multi-million dollar lawsuit for the rights to 10m digital editions of books – a suit being countered by the French and German governments among others – which if successful will grant it a virtual monopoly over distribution of the digital word. This prompts a couple of questions: is reading from a screen the same experience as reading from a page? And further, is writing for a digital medium the same thing as writing for print?
The answers to these questions are maybe not as simple as they at first seem. One consequence of the digitisation of nearly all aspects of our lives is the increasing sense that we live through our computers, that they are extensions of our selves. Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been examining this phenomenon for nearly 30 years. In her prophetic book, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, written as long ago as 1995, she suggested that our relationship with our laptops and hand-held devices gave us a Freudian sense of the uncanny. "Like dreams and beasts, the computer stands on the margins," she wrote. "It is a mind that is not yet a mind. It is inanimate, yet interactive. It does not think, yet neither is it external to thought. It is an object, ultimately a mechanism, but it behaves, interacts and seems in a certain sense to know."
All our engagement with the digital world carries elements of this mostly subconscious relationship. The spaces computers open up for us are in a real sense part of our personal space; we make them our own; they share our secrets, house our memories; they are our intimates. We would be bereft if we were to lose them.
Slowly all the aspects of the world that were formerly external to us, out there – friends, shops, newspapers and now books – are being accommodated into this space, so that they can be contained almost entirely on our personalised screens: aspects of our selves, part of our understanding of who we are.
We don't necessarily believe that computers can think, but we do have a sense that they can listen. Way back in the 1960s Joseph Weizenbaum, an artificial intelligence pioneer, wrote about his experiences with his invention Eliza, a computer program written to mirror the user's thoughts, which picked up on phrases typed into it and turned them into questions, making the program seem like a benign counsellor. To the comment "My job is making me unhappy", the program would respond, "Tell me about your job", or "Why do you feel unhappy?" Weizenbaum was disturbed to discover that even his brightest students, who knew perfectly well that they were talking to a computer program, nevertheless wanted to chat to it and share secrets with it – indeed, Weizenbaum suggested, they wanted to be on their own with Eliza whenever they possibly could.
Part of the attraction of this, Weizenbaum observed, was that the dialogue with the screen was essentially risk-free. The students could engage with the computer without fear of exposure or embarrassment. It gave them the illusion of interaction, with none of the attendant dramas of human conversation.
In the years that followed, Weizenbaum became increasingly sceptical of technology that allowed us to experience the world at one remove and on our own terms. He had grown up in Nazi Germany, and saw in the virtual world some of the dangers of a system that divorced the individual from the necessity of regular and frank human interaction and allowed everything to become an extension of personal need and desire.
Most of the claims made for the virtues of online interactivity are also, read another way, the expression of these fears. We hear frequently that we are quickly moving toward an era that will allow each of us to become the editor of our own newspaper and director of our own television schedule; our computers will help us in this process, listen to our histories, define our likes and dislikes and recommend accordingly; they will be our personal shoppers and cultural critics, reinforcing our tastes.
This new solipsistic power, however, is unlikely to be without consequences. Some of them are already apparent. A world that constantly reflects back to you your own wishes, through a computer that seems to be your friend, will inevitably enhance your sense of self, and the unwarranted belief that your views have a weight and authority. If there is a growth industry on the internet it is in opinion; the risk-free interactivity that Weizenbaum observed at the genesis of the technology has evolved in subtle ways.
One of the most obvious and curious aspects of individual engagement with a virtual world, whether in a blog, or a chat room or on a discussion thread, is that a large proportion of it is conducted anonymously, or through an opaque alter ego. This allows all of the possibilites that Weizenbaum's Eliza granted to its audience, but with a greater illusion of proper interactivity with other human voices. It is the best of all worlds: in cyberspace you can say anything you want and never be held to account for it. Nothing is at stake. Any writer who has never come up against an editor, or a reader, can always feel himself a genius.
It has widely been assumed, given that the progress of technology is generally thought to be a one-way street, that all information, all "content" will eventually migrate to one digital medium or another – the Kindles and Nintendos are the latest milestone in that progress. But what effect might that have on writing itself?
There has recently been something of a backlash in the conventional publishing world against the "tyranny" of online conversion. Several of these books have argued that the feature of the digital universe that threatens to overwhelm us is that we are, in the phrase of Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics at Washington, "always on", which is to say we are so consistently wirelessed to blogs and Blackberries and Twittering and Facebook that we are losing our capacity to think in the "real" world. Moreover, that the capacity for rigorous sentence construction, of the kind explored by Don DeLillo, is being replaced in online communication by a lazy and hasty "whateverism", where nothing that is written has to adhere to the rationalities of syntax or argument, and where no time is given to clarifying thought. Lee Siegel, meanwhile, author of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, extends this argument into an entertaining and sustained rant against the imprisoning internet and the rhetoric of "blogfascism".
"In the pre-internet age…," he observes, "there came a moment when you turned off the TV or the stereo, or put down the book or magazine… You stopped doing culture and you withdrew — or advanced — into your solitude. You used the phone. You went for a walk. You went to the corner bar for a drink. You made love… You wrote a letter.
"Now, more often than not, you go to the computer and online. There you log on to a social networking site, make an entry on your blog, buy something, try to meet a romantic partner… You might send an email, but no one ever just sends an email. Every online activity leads to another online activity…"
Siegel exaggerates for effect maybe, but any one of us who spends a large part of his or her day – for work and leisure – in front of a screen will recognise at least the contours of that behaviour. Your computer invites habitual usage, from email to bookmarked sites, to Twitter followers, to YouTube favourites, and it is a circular rather than a linear progress; if you plotted your history folder I'm guessing you would discover it was not about narrative, but repetition. This circumnavigation of our familiar haunts may suggest exploration, or at least the possibility of it, but there is a compulsive sameness to the quality of the experience. Some of this has to do with the computer's illusion of constant novelty (constantly disappointed), some of it has to do with its inbuilt solipsism, its anti-social quality, which can give rise to that mean-spirited tone of generally anonymous debate and comment that the New Yorker writer David Denby has recently dismissed as "snark".
Even evangelists of the newer technologies have lately been expressing some of this boredom. Lily Allen, a MySpace creation if ever there was one, recently abandoned all online activity in order to give privacy a go, and claimed she felt better for it. Stephen Fry's now famous anti-blogging diatribe is worth remembering for the following observation:
"I don't know about you but whenever I read a blog I do not let my eye drop below half the screen in case I accidentally hit the bit where the comments reside. Of all the stinking, sliding, scuttling, weird, entomological creatures that inhabit the floor of the internet those comments on blogs are the most unbearable, almost beyond imagining."
The unremitting tone of that "snark", it often seems, is born not out of genuine anger, but of the experience of half-engagement in the world, of shouting at someone who can't shout back, of interacting without feeling vulnerable to another person.
A while ago, I tried to track down the creator of the first "weblog", Jorn Barger, who had coined the term in creating his legendary online home, Robot Wisdom. Having begun as a sort of personal polemic, Robot Wisdom had quickly developed into a list of daily links to dozens and dozens of internet items that had caught Barger's "always on" antennae. I'd read somewhere that Barger, despite his pioneering blog, was living on the streets of San Francisco. When I eventually tracked him down he agreed to speak online rather than in person (of course) and denied living rough. Some of our "interaction" went like this:
Me: Can you remember the original impulse behind Robot Wisdom?
Barger: The phrase goes back to 1978, referring to my methodology for studying psychology. I started the weblog as a way of finding an audience who might see the connections between my many interests…
Me: How far do you think you have succeeded?
Barger: There are hundreds of people who are aware of the range of my interests now, but still no sign anyone sees how they're connected.
Me: Do blogs spell the demise of print, of newspapers and eventually books?
Barger: I'd like to think that 20 years from now commuters will still read newspapers on the train to work, but that, because of blogs, the range of stories will be much wider and deeper, quicker to spot what's interesting… most people don't read anyway.
Me: Do you think there is a limit to the number of voices we can listen to?
Barger: I pity the fool who has any fixed limit.
Me: Having lived most of your life in them, do you think virtual worlds are hopeful places?
Barger: Currently they're exercises in coping with griefers, but in the long run this should be very useful…
In some ways it seemed to me Barger's restless attention, his desire to have the world out there understand the connections he made between his spiralling online interests, was emblematic of the medium itself. Blogging, for all its virtues, has almost invariably proved itself to be an occasion for having the world understand me, rather than me understanding the world. For all its manifold benefits there is an inbuilt self-enclosure to online activity. One thing always leads to another.
One person with a comparable range of paranoias and interests to communicate to the world as Barger is Don DeLillo. It is telling that DeLillo has succeeded in finding the connections between all the multiple strands of his attention, not through exponentially multiplying and endlessly self-referencing links to distant corners of the internet, but through the hard labour of putting one word down next to another and having each of his thoughts make sense with reference to the observable world. DeLillo is an extremely brilliant example, but that's what writers do. It is impossible to judge whether the 800 pages of Underworld could have been written on a computer, with all its inbuilt distractions and dead ends, but I'm guessing not.
For the time being the Kindles and the rest are standalone devices, but it will surely not be long before they and the thousands of books they contain are bundled up with all the other must-have applications into a single computer which will mediate our lives: more undifferentiated text to match our own mood. "Technologies," Sherry Turkle points out, "are never just tools, they are evocative objects. They cause us to see ourselves, and our world, differently." Will anyone who is "always on" have the concentration to read the great social novels – those ultimate "interactions" with the world – on a screen? Will anyone be able to see far enough beyond themselves to write one?
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Kindle for Christmas?

This article appeared on p6 of the Features section of the Observer on Sunday 6 December 2009. It was published on guardian.co.uk at 00.10 GMT on Sunday 6 December 2009.

Comments in chronological order (Total 41 comments)

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  • mwanderson mwanderson

    6 Dec 2009, 7:14AM
    @rufustfirefly66 ? your comment is an odd one, and particularly indicative of the "snark" inference by Tim Adams in this article. Why are you attacking Mr DeLillo's form of how to express himself? He's not deriding any other form but merely explaining how, as an author who has an emotional connection to what he writes how he gets that emotion out. You've have obviously merely read the article, rufustfirefly66, and not understood it which is clearly shown in your comment. And I say this from a point of experience. I am also a writer and one young enough to be within the generation that twitters, facebooks and has a heathly understanding that the way we read in the future will evolve through formats such as e-books and devices like Sony's Reader and Amazon's Kindle. But, and here is where I completely support Mr DeLillo's beliefs, when I write I like to use a certain type of paper and a fountain pen with sepia ink. I love the scratch of the pen on the paper; I adore the flow of the ink as it leaves the nib of the pen; I'm in love with the act of writing, of expressing myself not simply in what I say but also how I say it. I used to write on a computer but my agent at the time suggested I wrote too much because the computer's speed allows almost almost too many formless thoughts to be quickly laid on the screen without a true reflection of what you are writing. So he said why not write with a pen? I was sceptical but he was right; when I wrote with a pen - and by God, it is hard work - I was forced to reflect, ponder and think about each word, each sentence because there is no delete button. The writing that comes from me now is of a quality far and above what I produced on the computer. But that statement isn't deriding those authors who do use word processing packages, merely positing a different point of view to the benefit of using conventional methods. Besides Mr DeLillo's actions of hitting the keys are no different than an author using a keyboard and computer to write: the only difference is that of paper and pixels. The other difference is that Mr DeLillo would also take the time and respect as a gentleman of words to get your name right, rufustfirefly66.

  • maggiepower maggiepower

    6 Dec 2009, 8:30AM
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  • maggiepower maggiepower

    6 Dec 2009, 8:30AM
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  • JoannaReally JoannaReally

    6 Dec 2009, 9:13AM
    Books are already becoming rare, but also still associated with prestige. I had three undergraduates in my office, and they suddenly started wondering whether they would ever own so many books as I had there and asking how many I had read & how much I had spent buying them. (I asked them how much they had spent on beer.) Most of my books are at home, and I think I don't read nearly as much as many of my colleagues. But I think we're hitting yet another generational shift.

  • BigRed1 BigRed1

    6 Dec 2009, 9:33AM
    I can understand (at one remove) why an author might prefer paper and pen, or paper and typewriter, or dictaphone and secretary, or word processor and printer, etc. However, I'm not convinced that ebook readers massively change the experience of reading. It is a different experience in some ways but surely the work (the content, the words, the writing) are the same and have the same power whether I read the hardback, the paperback, the pocket-size edition, or any variety of ebook reader? I can see that access to the original manuscript, with notes and scribbles, would be a different experience but not that of printed page versus electronic ink page. Yes, a book feels different to a piece of electronics but then a leather-bound vellum first folio will feel different from a mass market paperback or a Chinese bamboo book. As a life-time lover of reading (reading - emphasis) I have just bought a Kindle. It brings me convenience, in terms of not taking a suitcase full of books on holiday, and in having all my reading in one place available to me. My teenage son is buying one and I'm delighted as I want to encourage in him that same life-long love of reading, of words, language, the beauty of a well constructed piece of writing. There are downsides to the ebook reader of course. It can encourage the kind of 'content surfing' I experience from an array of choices on TV, or on my iPod, where there's so much choice that nothing quite meets my needs. I can't talk for other ebook readers but reading a newspaper on the Kindle is a less than ideal experience. However, the experience of reading, which may be subtly different on different media, isn't why I read. I read to experience the writing of the author and this is the same whether it is on paper or on screen. Indeed it may be the same if it is read to me, as my initial experiences of reading were those of being read to by my mother.

  • snark1 snark1

    6 Dec 2009, 10:52AM
    Well, when you think about it, we've only had printed books for about 500 years. Before that it was all literally by hand, whatever the medium; I suspect the staff of scriptoria and the factories that converted sheepskin and calfskin into vellum, and the collectors of oak-galls which made much of the ink, refused to believe that their trades would be moribund within a generation. In the developed Western countries. Because that's the point, isn't it? There are millions of people in this world, including the civilised West, for whom computers and their apps are a complete irrelevance or unknown. And we in the West don't know what's going to happen to our technology, predicated as it is on unlimited cheap power and materials from fossil deposits. If you can't charge up or plug in your Kindle, you are stuck - whereas a paper book needs no backup, printing and papermaking can be done by purely mechanical means; and writing can ultimately be done, as it was for thousands of years, by any sharp instrument on any markable surface. Myself I would guess that the printed book has a good while to go yet.

  • torvald torvald

    6 Dec 2009, 11:17AM
    Senryu Our dying life Briefly forget to breath And it ends Senryu A dark alleyway You?ve no business being there Glint of jagged steel Senryu Five ton truck Behaving like a crazy horse Your very last thought.

  • Faustus Faustus

    6 Dec 2009, 11:26AM
    Thanks Tim, I enjoyed your article. Your highlighting the tendency towards solipsism is spot on. Our ability to sustain personal relationships has been steadily eroding for some time, and exponentially too with the emphasis on professional and technological networking. Not finding satisfactory intimacy and too much of the anonymity of mass society prompts us to use technology to withdraw into a 'safe' world of our own making, which tends to spiral us even further into isolation. I have a nephew who was baby sat by the television, was given the latest device that hit the market with every turn of the season. Through no fault of his own he completely missed out on acquiring the necessary social skills, while everyone marvelled at his ability to navigate the latest technology. He wafted through school and is unemployable, but constantly absorbed in a world of his own making where his most intimate thoughts are locked away from us but no doubt spilt out into a world of faceless acknowledgement. In another article here in the guardian it has been pointed out that the London theatre scene is thriving and that cinema is waning. To me, this indicates that people are aching for the intimacy and engagement that live entertainment can provide. On the other hand, I was given a free ticket to a musical last night. It was heavily papered. All the actors were miked. Every gesture was choreographed and every bow. All the acting and singing tended towards aggression or feigned, sentimental love between its characters. There was a set change every three minutes and costumes and movement was all designed for hypnotic effect, as was the music. Each voice was this 'belting' style which emphasised the passion but without nuance. To immerse oneself in a piece of theatre exercises endurance. It is the same with a novel. And it is the same again with relationships. Multi tasking is the catch cry of the day and these new technologys encourage us to flit from one distraction to the next. Immersion in one task brings great benefits. Variety is the refuge of the bored.

  • MarkNFisher MarkNFisher

    6 Dec 2009, 11:34AM
    I haven't read a book as handwriting rather than typeset text since I was at junior school, fifty years ago. It was my book, written for English classes. Everything else about it was book-like: it had an illustrated cover, a contents page for the chapters, and the individual pages were bound in. I suspect cow gum was involved somewhere. It was the technology we had then, that a 6 or 7 year old could use for themselves. I have never bought a book that wasn't typeset. I thankfully stopped sending handwritten letters when I bought my first home computer in the mid-80s and overnight people were able to read what was sent to them. It is likley that a book produced by a 6 or 7 year old today will be word processed. However, even up to their final exams at degree level, we expect todays learners to use handwriting, but their lecturers use email and word processing in their work, their grammar and spelling corrected for them. I still take handwritten notes at meetings as I have never learnt to type fast enough. They have to be in capital letters or I won't be able to decipher them later when I type them up. In the same way that it is still a good idea to learn multiplication tables when young, even though calculators exist, I am sure we all still need to learn to hand write - both aid in our mental development. But there will be a point in development when the switchover to technology brings undoubted benefit. When I write nowadays, I have the world's information sources at my fingertips, dictionaries, Thesaurus etc, as well as visual images and sound to stimulate and inspire. The autonomy that confers is remarkable, but I think it also adds considerably to the contribution I can make through the "written" word.

  • martinique martinique

    6 Dec 2009, 12:03PM
    The snarkiest comment here is by mwanderson coming down like a load of bricks on rufustfirefly66 for making a perfectly sensible query. Most of all this talk about the horrors of the digital age (I simplify) is just that - talk, not philosophical critique, of an unfortunately boring variety. You can spend your time online digging poisonous veins of unmitigated snarkery and you can regularly find informed discussion of an enlightening kind - for example the fascinating discussion of Dylan's literary borrowings in *Chronicles* to be found among other things collected by the same Jorn Barger interviewed above. As in non-digital life, it depends where you (know to) go. But I would add that lively talk is the basis of any literary or other community, the compost, and it ill befits a writer to depreciate the source of his creation.

  • muscleguy muscleguy

    6 Dec 2009, 3:30PM
    Some of these people obviously read blogs that I don't. I hang out on blogs where being able to construct a complex sentence are seen as strengths and get responded to positively. If your experience is other, you need to look harder. I started to read this piece expecting a cogent comment on e-book readers, instead it seques into a disquisition on online interactions which misses the point of an e book reader. The act of reading a page on an e-book reader is just like reading a page, it doesn't flicker, it is literally black ink on a white background. It is not a cathode ray or LCD screen. To your eyes it strains them just as much or as little as the page of a book. I am relaxed about them and desire one because I see the benefit of being able to carry multiple volumes around in the space of a small one and that won't strain my eyes like a computer screen will attractive. I am annoyed that the prices of e-books are the same as paperback versions despite publishers' lower costs and that the DRM means I cannot sell them second hand or donate them to a charity shop. These things need to change and I suspect the market will remain small until they do. I wonder how long it will be before someone comes up with a convenient scanner/OCD device that can scan a book automatically for you. The book equivalent of those mp3 turntables and now tape decks. it might come out as a side product of Google's effort. BTW I don't ascribe malice to what Google are doing, I think they have so much money that in trying to spend it in useful ways (Google Earth is wonderful imho) they charge into things with insufficient foresight. Pace streeview cars and book copyright arguments. But the original idea was laudable, it was the scan and put online thousands of out of print, out of copyright books that were otherwise hard or expensive to get hold of. The problem was that firstly they have tried to claim copyright of the scans and they have moved out from that to include stuff they really should have asked about first.

  • butterballer butterballer

    6 Dec 2009, 3:43PM
    Isn't the transformation of the book less about its physical/material form and more about that when a book becomes digitized it ultimately becomes plastic and unfixed? It can be augmented-its no longer 'stand alone'. Instant wikipedia links, AV embedded content, little blipverts, more' options' and 'choices' etc. As I write this I realize it sounds like I'm just talking about an 'interactive' book as they were imagined ten years ago but there does seem an inevitability to the boundaries of the book being dispersed by technology and therefore writing itself-the novel- having to evolve, or mutate, into something else

  • mwanderson mwanderson

    6 Dec 2009, 4:41PM
    @martinique ? I think you have misunderstood my comment completely. Yes, I am being snarky at rufustfirefly66 but simply because he/she decided, in a very obvious way, to criticise Don DeLillo's personal way of writing. That wasn't the point of the article and implied that they had simply read the opening paragraph and misunderstood the whole point. DeLillo was not suggesting that his way is the only way of producing literature however it is read, and neither, might I add, was he the author of this article. So therefore, as a fellow writer, I felt it was within my responsibility that I should stand up for unfair criticism of an individual who was being quoted, rather than offering opinion for criticism. There is a difference. If you read further through my entry I merely explain how I write, and of my support for writing by hand - writing that, frankly, I don't mind how it is read, be it on a digital reader or as ink on paper but that it is read at all. What I do mind is when individuals feel they can criticise openly and without fear of remonstration or substantiation on social media, and especially when, in fact, their criticism is misplaced. It is simply common courtesy, Martinique, to get the name of the individual you are criticising right in the first place, wouldn't you agree? Or do simple rules of courtesy and respect for our fellow man and woman go out the window in the digital environment?

  • RoyChristopher RoyChristopher

    6 Dec 2009, 5:05PM
    Oh goodness... Choosing the difference is one thing (i.e., preferring to shop online, downloading MP3s, buying a Kindle, etc.). Having it forced upon us is another. With the latest involuntary seismic shifts in media ? the disintegration of the CD market and subsequent closing of retail outlets, the shrinking of magazines and nodding off of newspapers ? the changes are now coming without choices. Yes, I realize that we?ve made these choices in an Adam Smith, ?invisible hand? kind of way, but one wonders where these changes will leave us. The prediction of the death of print media has been on the books since TCP/IP, but now that it finally has a body count, panic is around every corner. http://roychristopher.com/bits-vs-atoms-the-rematch

  • francaisenyc francaisenyc

    6 Dec 2009, 6:16PM
    All profit driven, all death distractions, re-marketing old books/music/art, experiencing it through a new interface/game, continue your adolescence into old age, avoid thinking of death, especially the 50-60yr olds - cutting edge technology synced with their own youth culture. re-market and live forever. The western world is a pure, compacted psychoneurosis, fiddling with therapeutic knobs.

  • LLeeLowe LLeeLowe

    6 Dec 2009, 6:58PM
    'Any writer who has never come up against an editor, or a reader, can always feel himself a genius.' Of course an unedited writer can, but your implication is that we do. Hardly! I'm always striving - struggling - with the flaws in my writing. And how do I find them? By reading widely, reading critically. My impression is rather that writers, edited or not, have a tendency to think of themselves as race apart. Perhaps it goes with the compulsion?

  • LLeeLowe LLeeLowe

    6 Dec 2009, 7:04PM
    And to add a point more relevant to the piece as a whole: I suspect it's only a matter of time till we have an electronic DeLillo (or several). All new technologies create the means, eventually, for masterworks.

  • psikeyhackr psikeyhackr

    7 Dec 2009, 12:26AM
    I would rather read Lois McMaster Bujold than Shakespeare and I don't understand why people think Neuromancer is so great. If e-books affect writing it will only be temporarily while people make the transition. The computers are all von Neumann machines which is a term we don't hear often enough. Every 12 year old should know it. Computers manipulate symbols. They do not UNDERSTAND the symbols. That is where the Artificial Intelligence business breaks down. The computer science people don't admit it because they want us to BE IN AWE of the computers. But who decides what GREAT writing is? The Liberal Arts people are totally out of touch with evaluating Science Fiction. This goes back to C.P. Snow's TWO CULTURES business and this ain't 1959 anymore. Kids weren't walking around with von Neumann machines in their pockets in 1959. But how many of those kids can't explain what an electron is? The trouble with Shakespeare is that his stuff is out of date in relation to what is going on in the world today. You can say people don't change all you want but Shakespeare didn't have to decide whether or not to fund Stem Cell research. He wasn't worried about the global effects of Peak Oil either. But actually some sci-fi writers from the 60s wrote stuff more relevant than Bujold. Mack Reynolds doesn't come close to her in writing ability but ignoring things he wrote about has resulted in problems we have today. Yeah, content and writing are different things. But GREAT WRITING ain't necessarily worth reading. Subversive

  • psikeyhackr psikeyhackr

    7 Dec 2009, 12:36AM
    I use an Archos PMA400 to do my e-book reading by the way. It is a Linux computer that does far more than just read books. MP3 player with 30 gig drive so it plays audio books too. Records and plays video. I can spy with a bullet camera attached to my glasses. Why people buy Kindles I don't know. I would sooner get a netbook. I'm considering an HP 311.

  • mwanderson mwanderson

    7 Dec 2009, 6:43AM
    @psikeyhackr I completely agree with you in respect that science fiction is a vastly under-rated medium of understanding humanity's relationship with the constantly evolving world stage, and the challenges and moral choices that science places before us. Personally I love Ursula Le Guin's feminist science fiction novel "The Left Hand of Darkness". The only point that I would disagree with is that, in my humble opinion, Shakespeare is as relevant today, and will continue to be in the future, because he understood human nature almost without parallel whatever the setting or year. Forget about trying to compare situations in Shakespeare with those happening in the world today as mere events in history as they unfold before us, but instead read Shakespeare as the ultimate set of psychology manuals. In his plays the characters exude every permutation of the seven vices and seven virtues known. These same behaviours are still in evidence within us all today because human nature is set; the interesting thing which both science fiction and Shakespeare does so well, is reflect on how humanity copes with challenges and pressures, both external and internal. An example being the emotions felt by Romeo and Juliet. No matter gender or sexual preference I think anyone anywhere would be able to find instances of starcross'd love within their lives where that emotion ruled our hearts and minds and yet circumstances strove to keep us apart, whether by individual intent or through social norms being challenged. Now, compare Shakespeare's couple with that of James Cameron's "Avatar" characters, Jake Sully and Neytiri showing currently in cinemas across the world. Apart from the obvious ecological and political parallels both current and historical, these starcross'd lovers are kept apart by societal challenges and yet their deepest desire is to be together, even to the point that they are willing to die for each other and all set against an incredible stage of alien landscape. Moral choices set against interesting and wonderful settings... surely the essence of both Shakespeare and science fiction? I think great writing, whether old or new and no matter the genre, has a place together, shoulder to shoulder, whether in pixels or on paper.

  • Vashtan Vashtan

    7 Dec 2009, 3:49PM
    I write by hand when I outline, and then type the novel straight into the computer. I've been published in paper and ebook. I detect no difference between them, with the possible exception that I prefer to write poetry by hand. You imply "Underworld" couldn't have been written on a computer - I'm not sure what your point is. That masterworks need to be typed on an old-fashioned type-writer? That us pedestrian writers who type books into a computer are less deliberate? (For the record, I believe that a good book happens in the editing stage rather than in the writing stage... and even he old masters had secretaries typing their novels). Almost every writer has their own way to write. Some face south, others have candles burning, others write in Starbucks, I listen to idustrial/heavy metal in the first draft and then edit by hand on a print-out). So I believe in: whatever works, but I don't believe any implication of superior quality dictated by the medium. I also strongly disagree about the sollipsist/narcistic nature of *all* Internet relationships. 30% of US couples getting married met on the internet. I have written collaborative novels with people in the US, and interact on a daily basis with my readers from all over the world. It's not all black and white, especially not for writers. It's just a new medium, a new channel, and new possibilties. Ebooks are a case in point. They are a typical "Long Tail" play. Ebooks might only sell a few hundred copies, maybe a few thousand, and might never break even if they were printed on dead trees, but what I'm seeing out there, there are stunning books being written for e-publishers, things that would be too risky as an investment for a classical publisher, and books that are not limited by the physical distribution chain (small publishers enjoy a much more level playing field). I see nothing to bemoan about this - I completely embrace it.

  • TimAdams TimAdams

    7 Dec 2009, 4:42PM
    Vashtan, rufus, etc, To clarify, I was suggesting that digital media change our relationship with concentration, language and, by extension, thought in ways that we haven't necessarily taken on board. I wasn't proposing that we all go back to typewriters, just noting that great writing - fiction, journalism, whatever - is about an engagement with the world in its particulars, and that such engagement is, I would argue, not always helped by the mediation of the various digital tools, which become emotional extensions of our selves. My point about Underworld was not to do with the habits of writing as much as the habits of attention. Best, Tim

  • Vashtan Vashtan

    7 Dec 2009, 5:08PM
    @Tim: Okay, we're getting closer to this. :) Now, the point about concentration might be valid, however, in my experience both as a writer and a friend of writers, I have to say that writing a novel at all - in fact, acquiring the skills to write a novel, or even readable fiction - requires a well-above-average ability to concentrate, focus, and prioritize. Writers that publish tend to be very hard-working, very focused, very driven people. After all, most of us not only hold down a day job (8 hrs of concentration a day), but then go home to.. work more. Now, it's not like ye writers of old didn't have to contest with distractions. What Twitter is today for writers (or Facebook, or blogging) is partying hard for our literary forebears. I'm reminded of the story about William Faulkner, who partied hard when he started out, and would then vanish from the literary party scene for three months, and people checking on him would report the sound of frantic typing. Every writer I know (and who has published or has finished a manuscript) knows when to turn off Twitter, Facebook, or even step away from a computer connected to the internet. (In fact I have several friends who work on terminals without any Internet connection). The Internet and all those time eaters just widened the scope of procrastination and excuses ("oh noes, I couldn't finish the chapter, I had to read my fifteen blogs and get into a flame war"). The mark of the amateur, I say. Much like a Faulkner who spent ALL his time partying rather than withdrawing to type like a madman every now and then. The fact that most writers hold down a day job, and most good writers learn, from the first creative writing seminar onwards, to research people in "real life" (out in the wilds, so to speak) means that we are living IN the world as much as in our own. One of the best pieces of advice out there is: "Don't quit your day job" - not just because of the precarious financial situation of writing people, but so we don't lose that connection and access to people that are living outside out heads. An interesting side note to your larger topic, though: the ascent of ebooks has brought a resurgence of short fiction, from short stories, novellas to short novels - especially in the large romance genre (which accounts for like 40-50% of all sales). People are busy, and want to get their story fixes quickly. I think that's an opportunity, too.

  • TimAdams TimAdams

    7 Dec 2009, 5:20PM
    Vashtan, Thanks for that. I'd say your notion that people 'want to get their story fixes quickly' supports the wider argument. I'm interested, too, that you should write this anonymously, why's that? Best Tim

  • Vashtan Vashtan

    7 Dec 2009, 5:33PM
    @Tim: Sorry for that "Vashtan" is my usual online pseudonym - and it's ancient. I registered it quite a while ago, but my intention is not hiding. A quick googling ("bing-ing" is not the same, is it?) will doubtlesly take you to the name I use for writing my English fiction. Also happy to talk further by email - this username at gmail com. The resurgence of short fiction comes with the format, I feel, rather than people's dropping attention span. I see a diversification in terms of formats rather than an overall shortening. I also see ebooks that are 250k words long - which would be an enormous book which would be very hard to sell to a publisher (due to much higher production cost). The maximisation of profit and the pressure on costs (heavy books are more expensive to make, distribute, and store) have given us the "standard length" for novels (in the area of 60-90k). Ebooks take all these considerations away. I also see the reemergence of serial and subscription fiction. I see authors making a living on a "pay me USD 5/month, and you get a free story for as long as I have at least 30 subscribers" models. You *can* now sell short stories for a dollar or 50p or 50 cents via fictionwise or other ebook dealers. Back when I started, short stories were very nearly unsellable (I started out in Germany, which lacks a well-developed short story market). These days, I can sell short stories via SmashWords (a platform that is like Lulu.com for ebooks), or sell it to an epublisher, who makes it available through the various ebook outlets. Hence I believe that current trends work in writers' favours. They certainly do for me and my writing friends (piracy is another issue).

  • LLeeLowe LLeeLowe

    7 Dec 2009, 6:38PM
    One of the things that worries me about online and perhaps e-fiction in general is precisely what Tim points to, i.e. that people 'want to get their story fixes quickly'. Take Vashtan's example of short fiction. A good short story is far from a quick fix. In fact, it is often far more demanding to read (and to write) than a novel because of the compression involved, the weight of individual sentences. Though I only publish in e-formats, I do recognise that fiction which requires slow reading may atrophy.

  • Vashtan Vashtan

    7 Dec 2009, 8:06PM
    @LLeeLowe: The "quick fix" I mean strictly in the sense of a) that they can have it immediately (download the story on a smartphone or an e-reader with a download option) and b) it can be read quickly. That doesn't invalidate the short story - or the reader of the short story. And while writing a short story takes a long time and diligence, and likely even more skill than a novel (or a different kind of talent, I don't know, I write both, and usually for the reason that the idea isn't long enough for a novel) - I work on a short story for a few weeks (maximum), while I can spend anything up to 18 months on a novel. They are, in the end, faster.

  • earwigger earwigger

    7 Dec 2009, 9:47PM
    The medium is irrelevant. If good writing is killed off, it will be the result of publishing (a subjective business at the best of times) falling into the hands of marketing and accounts departments. If your writing doesn't conform to their standards (set lengths for given genres, etc), you stand sod all chance of getting published. If good writing is to survive, it has to be taken out of the hands of such illiterates and writers have to make direct contact with their reading public. The technology exists. All we need now is a viable market place that isn't swamped by multinationals who don't like that sort of competition.

  • DelBW DelBW

    7 Dec 2009, 10:45PM
    We got our 15 year old daughter a laptop about 10 months ago and I can not tell you how much her behaviour has changed since then. Tim Adams' observations on solipsism, the computer becoming almost a substitute for "real" interaction and socialisation ,and the lack of any "real" criticism and critique on most sites, social networking or otherwise, sent shivers of recognition down my spine. Reason being that for the last 6 months solipsism and snark has been the order of the day from a girl who is a very well read and enthusiastic reader but who used to be a very vocal, respectfully argumentative and inquisitive young Guardian reader......! Bloody teenagers. This article gave us the first good and proper chance for a long time to talk about her online time and how it has been affecting her and others. When I explained exactly what solipsism was her face fell in a sort recognition and we had a good laugh and a proper talk for the first time in ages like we used to. She agreed with and was surprised by those parts of the article which were written in a way that I would never have been able to express myself but really wanted to say. Thank you Mr Adams. I owe you a large beer.

  • Liam01 Liam01

    8 Dec 2009, 4:22AM
    Q. Will e-books spell the end of great writing? A. No. So long as humans write, there will be great writing. Q. Will anyone who is "always on" have the concentration to read the great social novels ? those ultimate "interactions" with the world ? on a screen? A. Yes. Thats a bit like asking when gramaphone was first invented : "Will anyone who is always listening to music have the concentration to listen to the great operas ? those ultimate "interactions" with the world ? on a gramaphone?" Q. Will anyone be able to see far enough beyond themselves to write one? A. Yes. So long as humans write, there will be great writing. A little less hand wringing, a little more excitement, a little more faith in human beings please. We're evolving nicely, and there's tons of great stuff to come. Get excited.

  • wikipedia wikipedia

    8 Dec 2009, 4:38AM
    To each his own, but I suspect preference depends on style. People who are constantly rearranging phrases and paragraphs and changing words and striking out this and adding that - of course they prefer a word processor of any sort to a manual typewriter. As De Lillo said, his method is like sculpting. In stone. Of the "better get it right the first time" school. Others view writing as modeling in clay, a constant plastic changing endeavor.

  • MonsieurBoulanger MonsieurBoulanger

    8 Dec 2009, 2:01PM
    I rather think that technophiles are a modern equivalent of Oscar Wilde's cynic, in that they know the cost of the everything and the value of nothing. With the e-book they say that the content is the same, but the format is shiny and new, and I can change the font size and carry my entire library with me on the train... yet that intangible element of reading, the pleasure of handling the book, turning the pages, the enjoyment in the object itself, is completely lost on them. There is nothing romantic about an ebook... ... and actually that gives me hope. I suspect that the biggest fans of the ebook probably don't care for the 'great writers' - or if that's unfair, that book lovers and literary types don't much care for ebooks, so hopefully great writing will continue despite or alongside this new toy.

  • Eldritchreality Eldritchreality

    8 Dec 2009, 4:50PM
    @MonsieurBoulanger I find it odd that you can feel a romantic attachment to an arbitrary object, whilst saying that it is impossoble to feel a romantic attachment to another arbitrary object. Simply by the fact that you feel an element of the sublime when interacting physically with a book, it should seem obvious that other (different) people might feel the same sort of romantic connection with an ebook reader. For what it's worth, I am one of those people. I love reading, and have grown up surrounded and immersed in the written word. However, the physical book itself has never inspired me. It has always been an adjunct to the beautiful words within. Since I started reading on various computer formats, I have started to really appreciate the way the physicality of the device I am using. The way that interacting with it is almost totally immersing myself in someone else's mind. I find its density comforting; It feels permenant, solid and reasuring. I find the metallic shine reassuring. It proves to me that this device has been designed, with all the implicit human connections that implies. Most of all however, I find the fact that it is technological inspiring. This device made of equal parts metal, electricity and inspiration has taken the concept of a book, and improved on it. That speaks to me directly of all the romance of human potential. @TimAdams I'm surprised that you considered Vashtan to be commenting anonymously. I'd consider a generic handle like TimAdams to be much more anonymous than Vashtans. If I wanted to investigate TimAdams I'd be stuck to the data on this website, since it'd be deeply unlikely that anything written by another TimAdams online would be the same one, meanwhile I can reasonably assume that anyone using the handle Vashtan elsewhere on the internet is either the same individual or someone trying to hijack their identity. If you hadn't happened to be the author of the original document, your handle would be considerably more anonymous than Vashtans.

  • TimAdams TimAdams

    8 Dec 2009, 5:26PM
    Eldritchreality, I'm not sure I understand your last three paragraphs. My point was that if you write under your own name you can be held to account legally and otherwise. Adopt a pseudonym and you are not putting much of yourself on the line. Schoepenhauer wrote well on the subject: 'Anonymity is the refuge for all literary and journalistic rascality. It is a practice which must be completely stopped. Every article, even in a newspaper, should be accompanied by the name of its author; and the editor should be made strictly responsible for the accuracy of the signature. The freedom of the press should be thus far restricted; so that when a man publicly proclaims through the far-sounding trumpet of the newspaper, he should be answerable for it, at any rate with his honor, if he has any; and if he has none, let his name neutralize the effect of his words. And since even the most insignificant person is known in his own circle, the result of such a measure would be to put an end to two-thirds of the newspaper lies, and to restrain the audacity of many a poisonous tongue.' Best, Tim

  • Vashtan Vashtan

    8 Dec 2009, 8:33PM
    @Eldritchreality - you wrote the post that I would have liked to write. Chapeau, monsieur, chapeau. @Tim: I consider my (fairly unique) name an obligation, BTW. To my knowledge, nobody else is using it. As long as I don't post rascally things or behave like an immature idiot on the internet under the name sexyhotguy (we've all been there, dealing with trolls), I believe I can call myself whatever I want. You can delete a rascally or criminal comment, you can track my ISP and find out who I am easily enough. I use this name to comment on blogs and review, because I don't want to "pimp" my "author identity" - wouldn't you get annoyed if I signed off every post with "A.V., author of X, VISIT MY WEBSITE AT www.av.com!". I'm here for the argument, not for self-promotion.
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