There Are Books, And Then There Are Books

The April 25 issue of The Boston Globe includes in its "Ideas" section an article by Edward Tenner entitled "Rebound." It offers a fairly useful accounting of where the "book industry" now stands in terms both of sales and of its encounter with the technologies of the electronic age. It seems to bring good news about the ability of books to withstand the challenge of these technologies, but there are also plenty of reasons, as the article itself reveals, to wonder what the future of serious writing, as opposed to the fate of "the book" as itself a technological device, will really look like.

The good news is that "books have multiplied partly because they have become less and less important as information storage technologies. As our dependence on them has shrunk, their number and variety has increased, and their status has been if anything enhanced by the attention that the Web has showered on them through online bookselling and discussion groups."

Here I think Tenner makes a very important point. To the extent that we rely less on books simply for "information storage," we might actually see them as even more valuable as the means by which writers (artists, thinkers, real journalists--in other words, creative and serious people) explore the possibilities of books as that form that allows for certain kinds of literary work to be carried out. "Books" might come to be seen as the only medium in which this kind of work can be done. (Whether such books continue to be printed on paper in the currently conventional way seems to me a separate, and frankly not very interesting, issue.)

Teller is surely also correct in pointing out that "the Web" has paradoxically enough elevated the status of books by making them more available and enlivening the discussion of books of all kinds. Those of us who maintain lit blogs might want to call Mr. Teller's attention to the contributions this form is making to the consideration of books and writing, but his larger point is cogent enough. And he is right as well in observing that "books [continue to] survive because technology has made it much easier to write and publish them."

But here the picture starts to seem somewhat cloudier. That more books can be produced doesn't mean they should be. Throughout the last decade, Teller asserts, "More and more people came to believe they could publish and flourish. According to a recent survey, 81 percent of Americans would like to write a book. Some of them are aspiring authors of serious fiction and nonfiction, who have never had an easy road and who now exist in greater numbers than ever, thanks in part to the proliferation of academic writing programs."

Now we all know that if 4 out 5 adult Americans published books, in the vast majority of cases their only readers would be close family members and perhaps the next-door neighbor. (If the author promised to reciprocate.) And it seems overwhelmingly likely that the book most such people really want to write is an autobiography or memoir--some kind of "life story." If the number of "life stories" being published continues to increase, this will only lead, in my view, to the ultimate cheapening of the value and integrity of books as the kind of distinctive medium I described above. And should the "proliferation of academic writing programs" continue without some fundamental change in the goals of such programs, they too will finally help to hasten the decline of genuine "creative writing."

All of which leads us to the truly bad news in Tenner's article:

Were the doomsayers needlessly gloomy? Not entirely. There does seem to be less zest for reading among today's college students than there was in the 1960s and early `70s. In the American meritocracy, general culture ranks far behind job-related learning. In Europe and the United States, demand has not kept up with the expansion of new pages, leading to sagging unit sales. . . .

So the increase in the number of books published doesn't really matter that much after all. What good does it do if no one really wants to read them or, more distressinlgy, knows how to read them, anyway? "Job-related learning" can certainly be done without books. The "zest for reading" is only becoming less zesty given the way literature and writing is currently being taught in most colleges and universities. If anything the oversupply of books can only make these problems worse, since even if you wanted to keep up on your reading, who can do so with so much coming over the transom?

I would like to suggest that the healthiest development in American publishing would be not publishing more books but publishing many fewer. This might result in feeding the American appetite for trash, but the loss of enthusiasm for reading is ultimately going to include the "commercial" authors as well. (It might hit them the hardest of all.) Most best-sellers are written to be movies in the first place, and I think that eventually they'll just be movies. In the meantime "the book" might be preserved as a space for serious writing, a mode of "communication" that might find the right audience for its method of communication. If the Book survives as something with a smaller but more dedicated audience, so be it. At least it survives. And might flourish.

Comments

[Daniel Green]

I might agree that "enjoyment of the reading of ANY book is likely to lead to the reading of more books rather than fewer." But I don't believe that this will lead to the reading of serious books if the book enjoyed is trash. It will lead to reading more trash. It's often said that readers can be led from "easy books" to serious fiction, but I've rarely seen it happen. As a college literature teacher, I tried.

[Ben]

I think that people can be led from easier (more commercial, plot-driven)books into more serious fiction, and that enjoyment of the reading of ANY book is likely to lead to the reading of more books rather than fewer. You can beat up Stephen King or Dan Brown or Oprah, but I think their net influence has been to get more people reading more books rather than drawing the few readers there are into less-than-serious reading and more movie or TV watching. Certainly not every Da Vinci Code reader will be led from that into Umberto Eco, or Robbe-Grillet, but some will (or to The Dante Club and from there to Dante....).

And the profits from those books do give the publisher/conglomerates some money to buy other books and other types of books (I say this as the author of literary novel published by Doubleday--I sent Dan Brown a thank-you note because I'm sure that his success contributed to their ability to buy little books like mine).

That doesn't make the market for small publishers or works in translation much more welcoming, nor does it necessarily make the audience for difficult books, but it does gentle the slope for readers--it gets people in bookstores looking for books to read, talking about reading books--maybe gets a book club or two started. I think many more people like the idea of liking reading than do spend significant time reading, and that the role of the internet can be in drawing them into works they might like and connecting them to other readers in the same rough range--from Tom Clancy to Neuromancer?

[Kevin Holtsberry]

I think a libertarian, if I may use that term, view of culture is also involved. If everything is simply a lifestyle choice, if there are no standards for quality or seriousness, then mass culture simply means more and more entertainment choices with less and less literature.

I agree that lit bloggers could be a positive influence in this regard. I would like to see more explanantion of what is good and why. Perhaps the accessability and casual nature of blogging would allow those passionate about the subject to promote quality books and thus cut through the fog of information overload. They could use their knowledge and skills to communicate to non-literary types why literature matters and recommend a place to dive in.

More in a posting later . . .

[James]

"Most best-sellers are written to be movies in the first place, and I think that eventually they'll just be movies."

Except that the number of movies released each year is *far* less than the number of even best-selling novels released. Because of the enormous costs involved in making and releasing a film, and therefore the relatively few movies that get released each year, I don't think they will (or can) take the place of best-seller, popular fiction--though, as you say, they seem to fill the same function.

What is true, I think, it that most popular-aiming books are written with a "movie-deal" in mind. So they are potential movies, however, most will never become movies.

[R. A. Rubin]

Err, so my unfinished novel, "Blondes of Wisconsin" loosely based on the people I remember from my college days in the 60's and my own ehh life has no value as liter-a-ture, then the Hemingway's and F. Scott Fitzgerald's were fools.

[Mark]

This is too funny, Dan - my item this morning admonishing folks to keep their "book within" inside of them was written before I stopped by here.

You and the Globe article do touch on something I've felt rather keenly over the last few years, the decline in the desire to read. I think I've mentioned this to you before, but I think that our challenge as litbloggers has to do with bringing new eyes to serious fiction. Presently, as fine a job as we seem to be doing, we're preaching to a choir, to an audience that is already interested in what we're discussing. My impulses these days are to figure out how to bring those non-readers or casual readers into the fold, and to show them that something of real value awaits them between the covers.

But then we hit up against your most disturbing point - with which I agree - about the inability of a potential audience to be able to read and understand serious work. And that's where I start to putter and run out of steam - because short of sending them all back to school (which isn't necessarily a good thing either), I'm not sure how to change that.

Don't mean to seem so bleak this morning; I'm only in my first pot of coffee.