The two (not quite) Victorian novels

It gives me true fun... Not long time ago I finished reading „The French Lieutenant's Woman” by John Fowles and was truly amazed by its depth (as compared to the movie of the same title), and now I'm in the mid of Jane Austen first novel „Sense and Sensibility”. I may seem naive to be a man of 50 and read such a literature as Austen's novels, but I do have true fun. I look from the different angles on the period in human culture called Victorianism (even though Austen formally lived in the preceding period).

Fowles delivers the contemporary account about Victorianism, and it analyses its dark sides at length, while Austen writes from the depths of the culture, believing in the values his heroes believed...

That's just a short note what I have been reading recently. Both reviews will come soon ...

Cri de coeur over books — The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts

I already reviewed a part of Sven Birkerts' influential book when I addressed his position on audio books. It is obvious that I was in disagreement with some of his opinions about this form of books.

Now it is a time to express my opinion about the book as a whole. It is a book about the change of our perception of literature and, in general, of books in the "electronic age" marked by shift from the deep perception of literature, experience of its meaning to the superficial, fast, „multilayered, multitrack ability to deal with the world” — characteristic to the electronic age.

The book is divided into three major parts. In the first „Reading Self” contemplates on the role of writing and reading for out inner life, our inner experience. With some autobiographical threads Birkerts main thought is the dialog between people that comes through writing:

„Every true reader, then, is a writer and every true writer is a reader, and every person engaged in the project of self-awareness is the reader and writer of himself. Writer and reader: They are the recto and verso of language, which is itself the medium of our deeper awareness.”

In the second part, „The Electronic Millennium”, Birkerts analyses the developments going on in the perception of literature and its importance in our times, and first analyses three important factors resulting from electronization of our literary experience: „The Language Erosion”, „Flattering of historical perspectives” and „The waning of the private self” giving all the factors deep explanation. One of the most important results of these factors is the danger of „societal totalism”, described as a „movement toward deindividuation, or electronic collectivization”.

Next, the author goes for the analysis of the impact of the pervasive external digital systems on our notion of wisdom and knowledge. Here the danger lies in the shift of our role in relation to knowledge:

„(...) we may choose to become the technicians of our auxiliary brains,mastering not the information but the retrieval and referencing functions” (...) „The leader of the electronic tribe would not be the person who knew most, but the one who could execute the broadest range of technical functions.”

It is hard not to agree with Birkerts — the danger is real.

Later in the same part, the author goes for analysis of audio books and hyperlinked systems. And here I came to conclusion that many his conclusions missed the true dangers and focused on some that are not really of any imminence. The first set of issues, related to audio books, I addressed before and I refer readers to that post. The second is related to hypertext. And here is where I disagree with the author very strongly. To me, he did not notice the true essence of hypertext. He focuses on potential non-linearity of reading on the web (true), on the difference on writing with the computer and a mouse, but misses the key point of the new communication enabled through hyperlinks. Some notes are good shots:

„Do we still call it reading? Or would we do better to coin a new term, something like 'texting' or 'word-piloting' ” or „Hypertext — at least the spirit of hypertext, which I see as the spirit of the times — promises to deliver me from this, to free me from the 'liberation domination' of the author”.

But generally, I must say, the Birkerts notion of hypertext is superficial and — that he also did not stress the real danger related to hypertext — the distraction it brings to frequent web readers...

The last part of the book, „Three meditations” contemplates the changes in literature and art. First, is describes the dissolution of the real audience („The isolated reader may remain, but the audience is gone and is not likely to reappear”) in the electronic era. Second, it refers to Alvin's Kernan's „Death of Literature” and analyses the eroding role of the literature and more generally, of art. The apparent reason of it, according to Birkerts, is in the ”entirely inhospitable” electronic environment to the „stuff of art”. Finally he worries about the degradation of the very role of author:

„It assumes, too, that people will, out of a vestigial craving for meaning, or out of a sinking dread at what their lives have become, turn again to writers for the news they need. If nothing like this happens, then the writer will take a place beside the scrimshow artist in the museum of hallowed but ultimately useless crafts.”

The book is concluded by a code with the significant title „The Faustian Pact”. Birkerts uses the devilish allegory and warns us about the full enodorsment of the electronic way of life:

„From deep in the heart I hear the voice that says, 'Refuse it'”

There is also an interesting author afterword, written by the author 10 years after the first edition of the book. He seems to ease his „Faustian Pact” dilemma: „It falls to us individually, one by one, to decide how we will face up to the seduction of the new — how much of it to use, how much to refuse”.

I must admit, that when I first read this book, several months ago I had a bit concerned opinion than today. Maybe it was after my reading of Nicolas Carr's "The Shadows" when I started to appreciate Birkerts "Cri de coeur" more...

Close Listening by Sven Birkerts — What is the problem with audio books ?

I was so deeply moved by a chapter of Sven's Birkerts „The Gutenberg Elegies” named „Close Listening” that I decided to commit a post — just about this chapter. As for the book itself, I hope to finish and comment on it during holidays, i.e. next week.

It is apparent, from the first sentences of the chapter, that Birkerts is against audio books. He gives a number of strong arguments. Let's see them here....

Passivity of audio books:

„Books, for me, have always been about covers and pages and grappling with the syntactical rigors of stationary prose. The passivity of listening seemed to me on a par with the passivity of television watching. How could it fail to reduce any work of merit to, at best, a companionable blur, a string of easy cadences in the ear?”

Confusion of experience.

He criticises the special effects that are sometimes added to the recordings (calls them tacky effects); but was is more important criticism is the confusion of our physical experience during listening, experience of driving, walking, commuting with the imaginative world of the story we listen to.

Limitation of the medium.

Sven maintains that certain literature is well perceived only through text:

„Our more serious literature incorporates levels of difficulty — in narrative sequence, referentiality, syntax, and linguistic density — and presupposes a reader who is free to hover over a phrase, reach for a dictionary, and dart back.”

Irrelevance of the recording pace to the text.

Sven gives examples, where the pace of narrator reading, being regular and uniform, was completely irrelevant to the meaning of the text. Descriptions, dialogues are usually fine, but when a book turns into some philosophical conjectures — the same pace is just unbearable:

„We don't just speed a thought through our neural network — we inhale it, hold it, wait for it to send ripples through the whole of our being. Rewinding the tape is no solution.”

Difficulty with deep reading.

„Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulses; the term I coin for this is
deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. (...) Deep listening to words is rarely an option. Our ear, and with it our whole imaginative apparatus, marches in lockstep to the speaker's baton”

Powerlessness of the listener.

Sven claims that when we hear a book we are deeply silenced by the vocal tyranny of the narrator:

„The listener is powerless against the taped voice, not at all in the position of my five-year-old daughter, who admonishes me continually, "Don't read it like that, Dad." With the audio book, everything — pace, timber, inflection — is determined for the captive listener. The collaborative component is gone; one simply receives.”

Sexless voicing.

The books read by male narrator lose the female character, if it is of importance and conversely, the manly dialogs read by a woman sound strange:

„Cheever's prose is as imprinted with his gender as Virginia Woolf's is with hers. Nor could I get past the bright vigor of the performing voice; I missed the dark notes, the sense of pooling shadows that has always accompanied my readings of the man.”

Abridgement of books kills their message.

Svens notices that too many of audio books are just bad abridgements. The arbitrary selection what to include what to leave out is usually killing the perception of the book. He gives an example of „Under the Volcano” by Malcolm Lowry:

„Lowry had meant his novel to turn like a wheel; everything in it is keyed to the concept of circularity, making chapter one absolutely indispensable . No amount of civilized gnashing by reader Christopher Cazanove could make up the
deficit.”

Multitrack sensibilities required.

Listening to audio book, requires a good deal of multitracking sensibility. This is in opposition to „single-track tasks demanded by the silent page”. What is more, it can create a shift or change in the way authors write today: „... is is not farfetched to suppose that a good part of future of literature will be bound up with the audio process.”

Despite all these remarks, the chapter ends with some positive remarks.

Sven recalls listening to James Joyce „The Dead” which he found great in the audio format. Basically he values the rendering of some short stories (by authors like Updike, Welty and Carver) in audio. He also notices that sometimes the good reader opens the deeper understanding:

„An evocative reading can capture the shifting tension that exists between sound and sense; it can unearth the overlooked sentence rhythm and whet the blade of irony. Reading is different from listening, yes, but in listening's limitations I have found unexpected pleasures.”

He ends it with these words:

„In the beginning was the Word — not the written or printed or processed word, but the spoken word. And though it changes its aspect faster than any Proteus, hiding now in letter shapes and now in magnetic emulsion, it remains. It still has the power to lay us bare.”

What do you think?

I'm passionate audio book listener, so this chapter requires me to comment and, more specifically to argue. But I will do it at some later time, maybe after your opinions...

Reading before holidays ...

I am particularly tired and exhausted before these, 2010 holidays. This is why I'm less active on my blog...

But to tell you what's going on, here it is, shortly: after enchanting „Les Miserables” I returned to Lakoff's „Political Mind” and, in paper, to Birkerts „The Gutenberg Elegies”. Both deserve posts, and I promise to deliver them when I settle in my little cottage on the shore of Baltic sea, i.e. next week.

I will also post my recollections and records from 2010 Literary Festival in Paris.

Despite the exhaustion, I was able to create a few play lists on YouTube related to this Festival. The one worth seeing features Philip Pullman and another one David Hare.

So... Keep visiting me ...

Cheers
Mirek