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San Francisco, 5:46 AM
Wed Nov 25
23 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/27/09
10/27/09
I can't really envision a world without literature, especially not in 25 years. I can see why latin poetry died off, probably because no one speaks latin. #philiproth
10/27/09
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10/27/09
To be fair, let's see what his new book is about.
*snip* --The Humbling's hero Simon Axler, an ageing stage actor who has "lost his magic"--
Ooooh!!!! A literary midlife crisis novel. How interesting! How original! How germane! See you all at the midnight release party!!1!
*I.M. is horribly prejudiced against the literati. YMMV. #philiproth
10/27/09
Maybe we're booooored with that crap and we're looking for some nice SF, mysteries, romances... #philiproth
10/27/09
There may be more channels on the TV but they are showing mostly crap. My daughter reads more than she watches television. Her books are her most prized possessions. She is in her early teens. In 25 years she will still love her books.
The YA section and Manga section are getting bigger at our local bookstore to meet the demand. Right now they have a buy three and get one free. She is currently writing up her wish list. #philiproth
10/27/09
Just as the best way to kill a language is to try and freeze it, the best way to kill an artform is to declare that only certain expressions of it are actually "art". People forget that in his day, Shakespeare was considered trashy mass-market stuff, full of violence and murder and lowbrow comedy and sex. In other words, it entertained, and then brought the bigger observations along for the ride.
10/27/09
10/27/09
^_^} aiiii!! so cool!
you probably get this a lot but, are you, in any way, possibly, maaaaybe, related... to *ahem.. Richard #philiproth
10/27/09
From a larger perspective, what will this do to storytelling? We all know some novels whose stories are medium-specific. Will the types of stories that can be told dwindle?
Anyway, I've been playing with this very idea in a fictional blog I'm working on:
[pagezeroblog.blogspot.com] #philiproth
10/27/09
really interesting blog! :)
I will endeavour to keep up with it as you write more!
Do you have counterparts to the Autor? Such as the Editor, or perhaps even the Word itself?
So intriguing! #philiproth
10/27/09
10/27/09
and not one of my boooks is an ebook nor will it ever be an ebook. #philiproth
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10/27/09
Judging from the article alone, this man needs to get outside more. I work with children...aged 6-13. A good HALF of them read for pleasure. One girl said she didn't know what she'd do without books to read.
Television and movies are all fine and good, but there's no commercials in a book, and as you read it's somehow more personal than watching a theatre screen. You see the characters in your mind how you want them, not how some producer does. Does anyone else ever speak the words the characters are speaking in a book out loud softly as they're drawn in to the story? I never do that with movies or television.
I do see the rise of print on demand and electronic books, mostly because that's happening now. To suggest people will stop reading novels in twenty five years is just rather strange.
And offtopic.. Fahrenheit 451. The ONLY book I liked out of 10th grade english class. #philiproth
10/27/09
Proof?
This: [www.theatlantic.com]
Look, it's simple: people ARE reading less now than they ever have before. And the people who ARE reading? They're reading a lot more crap.
I know the IO9 commentariat is more educated than most, but it's also filled with poseurs: you did NOT read Proust last week, give it up.
Technology has been reducing our ability to comprehend the written word for decades now, and the internet is accelerating it. Fewer people sit down with anything remotely dense to read. Sure, "airport" novels still get read, but that's not *reading*-- that's consumption. Look at a Dan Brown or James Patterson novel, and you're presented with five-page chapters with no words encountered beyond freshman year of high school (unless they're defined within the text, five times in a row so they sink in).
Your great-grandparents could read Latin. Your grandparents could read Hemingway. Your parents could read Dune. You could read to the end of this post.
Yor chldrn wnt evn bothr w tht mch. #philiproth
10/27/09
Point is, tastes change. You and Roth don't like the direction of that change but instead of trying to inject some of the grandeur of past ages into a medium that is always looking for a new voice and doesn't mind experimenting with form, you would rather bitch about my inability to conjugate a dead language.
The Martians will always win, especially when the alternative is as flimsy as a cookie. #philiproth
10/27/09
Listen, whatever technology is doing to erode "our" ability to read for anything length of time, it's more than a little ridiculous to assume that erosion is going to continue indefinitely, forever, for everyone.
Is the readership of the novel going to get smaller? Probably, for a while. But then, there was a time when no one could read in the first place, and if you were living in the early 19th century, you'd probably be making the argument that soon no one would be doing anything BUT reading novels. #philiproth
10/27/09
Because, guess what? There's always been crappy consumptable trash novels for people to read. Dime novels that were gobbled up like candy became widley distributed during the industrial revolution and have continued to do so since. Hell, Dickens was considered trash at the time because it was serialized and meant for the masses.
Take a look at pictures of middle class homes in the 50's- you seeing many bookshelves? Not too many people read a ton of books for fun in our grandparents generation.
And the only people in our great-grandparents gen that could read Latin were the privileged few who got education and the Catholic priests. The fact was that long ago the literacy rates of the primary spoken languages was abysmal why would they speak/read another language as well? #philiproth
10/27/09
"Look, it's simple: people ARE reading less now than they ever have before."
Totally true. 1000 years ago everyone was an avid reader. It's been downhill ever since. #philiproth
10/27/09
What I approve of is your use of sarcasm. Just wanted to get that out there. #philiproth
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10/27/09
Books are my life. I look at my book shelf and I can see my self reflected in it. They are like a collective autobiography of all the ideas and ideologies that have shaped me into the person I am today.
Nobody is f&*king taking that away from me! #philiproth
10/27/09
10/27/09
Excuse me? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? #philiproth
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10/27/09