The Rake Magazine

On the front page of yesterday's New York Times is an article by Motoko Rich titled, "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?" It's the first in a series that will explore "how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read." This installment focuses on the somewhat new debate as to whether online reading promotes literacy, or is detrimental to it. As Rich weighs out both sides of the issue in clear, measured prose, the central point that should have been made is completely lost amidst a sea of statistics and pedigreed quotes (the jab and hook of any journalist, to be sure).

To clarify: Online reading in this context does not refer to the ingestion of long articles and stories that just happen to be on the Internet, but could just as easily have been printed. Rather, the debate is about un-linear reading, reading broken up by hyperlinks and tabs and blurbs, which allow readers to "skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles, and ends."

Rich cites an NEA study ("a sobering report") that found only one in five 17-year olds reads for fun every day, down from one in three in the eighties. But then ‘reading' is later defined basically as data analysis, or a "way to experience information." If this is what students are taught reading is, which seems to be the case, and I suppose has probably always been the case, it's no wonder that that kids don't read. How many kids do math for fun in their free time? I wouldn't be surprised if that number is one in five, too.

The reason I say the article is mostly worthless is because it considers reading only as a means by which to take in and process information, and then implicitly chastises younger generations for not reading books. There is no mention, sadly, of the pleasure one derives from losing oneself in a narrative or, on the non-fiction side of things, immersing oneself in a subject. If reading were depicted in this way, which it should be, I think there would be more cause to lament. (Rich does have an essay that touches on that here.) In effect, Rich lends credence to the suspect merits of online reading, without getting into the real benefits of books.

 

To temper my wonking, here is a video of Ernie and Bert rapping.

The article's supporting cast of experts likewise define reading in scientific terms. "Reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more cognitively enriching, without doubt, than the short little bits you might get if you're in the 30-second digital mode," said Ken Pugh, a neuroscientist at Yale. Ooooooh, sounds enriching, doesn't it?

But the thing is, reading ain't for the head. It's for the soul, or whatever that murk inside our chests is.

(And yes, there's a fundamental reading level one must attain in order to function in the everyday world, but the NYT article is about books, and the decline of readership, which is why I'm addressing/about-to-adress why people read books, and why the experience of a book is unlikely to be replicated online.)

To read a book for its informational value is like joining a soccer team just to burn the calories. Yeah it's a nice side effect - people who read more novels score better on reading tests (surprise surprise); likewise, people who play soccer in their spare time are probably in better shape than people who sit on the couch. But if you're playing correctly, then that means you're actually engaged in the game, immersed in it, caught in the flow and the surges of adrenaline, you care about the final score, and hate the other team, and also maybe hate your coach who doesn't play you as many minutes as you deserve, the bastard. It's more than a work-out.

This isn't just about novels, either. Non-fiction suffers, too. Consider Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. If read correctly, one doesn't come away from that book simply with factoids about black holes and quantum physics; rather it helps one understand, on a larger scale, but in a small way, one's connection to the universe.

As Nicholas Carr points out in his Atlantic Monthly article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" the fractured nature of online reading necessarily annihilates the act of engaging with a narrative. This, I think, is the real danger.

A similar idea is depicted in the current issue of the New Yorker, in an article about insight called "The Eureka Hunt" by Jonah Lehrer. He interviews a cognitive neuroscientist who believes that "Language is so complex that the brain has to process it in two different ways at the same time. It needs to see the forest and the trees." The left hemisphere excels at denotation - storing the primary meanings of words; meanwhile the right hemisphere deals with connotation - the emotional charges in a sentence or a metaphor. "The right hemisphere is what helps you see the forest," is the scientist's next quote. But when one is distracted, he goes on, as one might be on the Internet, the right hemisphere's functioning becomes limited.

Meaning, I think, that when reading on the Internet, we can still process direct and obvious information - the stuff they're concerned about on proficiency tests - but the nuances of literature get lost. Unfortunately, some of the best literature is the most nuanced. Unfortunately, though I suspect Motoko Rich might sympathize with this, it goes unmentioned in the article.

A last thought:
Metaphor. From what I can glean from Wittgenstein, which isn't a lot, when we communicate we are endeavoring to express things that are actually, in a purer sense, inexpressible. Every word ever spoken, then, is a mini-metaphor. We don't actually feel a word called ‘sadness' - ‘sadness' is just the term we've come up with to best describe certain awful emotions. The feeling is greater than the word. Likewise, authors use metaphor to give their stories meaning beyond the actual sentences written on physical pages. To make a gross blanket statement, by and large online content does not make use of metaphor. It seems generally to be more reductive. Blogs are boiled-down opinions, and wikis are generalized information. It's fodder for arguments, rather than thoughts. Hyperlinks are not metaphors, they do not lead out to Real Life, but rather to other facets of the Internet. It's just that we're beginning to make the mistake of considering those two entities - Real Life and the Internet - to be the same.

I've been taught to trust blurbs about as far as I can throw them, which is roughly about as far as I can throw a book, which is not very far, because I am quite weak, my muscles haveing been described as sauce-like. In fact, the word blurb seems related, if only alliteratively, to the word blog - maybe both should be regarded with about the same amount of seriousness.

"Long ago," writes writer Stephen Dubner in his "Freakonomics" blog, "I used to think [blurbs] mattered a lot. Then I changed my mind, thinking that blurbs don't signal much about the quality of the book, but at least they signal something about the quality of the author's friends or acquaintances who were willing to blurb the book." He goes on to describe a situation where a book's editor offered to write a blurb for Dubner, and simply attach his name to it, for his convenience. (The link goes to that article.)

Rob Walker, who writes for the Times Magazine, states in an addendum to the "Freakonomics" piece that "the real audience for blurbs isn't really consumers at all - it's bookstore and particularly chain bookstore buyers" who want the imprimatur or well-known artists to hopefully help sell the name of lesser-known artists.

Fair enough, but I still don't like the idea that I'm buying my books from people who stock their shelves based on anything but a novel's actual merit. (Go used or go home, baby.)

Despite the apparently widespread knowledge that blurbs are basically useless, they appear on the back of every book, and I can't for the life of me ignore them. Sometimes they'll even dissuade me from buying a novel.

There are books that rely on their blurbs: Anything by James Frey, at this point.

Books that self-consciously make fun of the blurbing tradition (from Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius):

"This is a blurb. It conveys no information about the book whatsoever, no useful account of its contents, nor any serious comment as to its qualities. Authors like getting blurbs because they indicate that the author is an amiable and well-connected fellow; other authors like giving blurbs because it's free advertising for their own work. Editors and publicists like blurbs because blurbs help legitimize their own generally rather timid publishing decisions. You, the reader, are not exactly ill-served by this process - it is, at worst, a harmless display of vanity and insecurity - but if you're looking for a reason to buy and read this book, you're better off relying on the advice of other readers whose taste you share, or what minimal sense of the writing herein you can glean by standing here and skimming through the pages." - Jim Lewis

And books for which blurbs are superfluous:

"Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically" - this quote, that is, John Updike's, is affixed to the back of every Vintage Paperback edition of Nabokov's books.

Hot New Authors are often tapped, it seems, to blurb books by Slightly Less Hot New Authors. In the last couple years, I've been seeing current NYTimes darling Gary Shteyngart's name on the back of what seems like every contemporary novel. Shteyngart's own work (The Russian Debutantes Handbook, Absurdistan) might be described as ‘exuberant,' and his blurbs, likewise, are notable for their exclamation points. The guy practically redefines hyperbole. What's interesting is, it seems he's wholly unaccountable for his opinions - what's most important is getting Shteyn's name on that back cover, not what he says. While emphatic, his blurbs are also generic. And some of the books he blurbs are actually kind of mediocre (according to other critics, not just me).

Just a couple examples (I don't want to name the actual books, because some of them are in fact good):

"[ ] can't write a boring sentence, and the English language is the richer for it."

"[ ] has written a novel that is - sentence by sentence, idea for idea - peerlessly brilliant. Here is a supreme, mature novelist at the height of his powers. Take me to the hospital. My jaw has dropped."

So I was delighted to find that someone shares my opinion.

"I finished Sam Lipsyte's Home Land which Gary Shteyngart calls ‘genius,' " writes Stephen Schenkenberg, who edits St Louis Magazine. "Um, maybe a bit much. I really liked Shteyngart's first novel -- even bought it for my cousin in the X-mas gift swap -- and he was very funny and lively and smart on ‘Fresh Air'; but how you can call Lipsyte's book ‘genius' is beyond me."

(Finding corroboration about irksome blurbers is hard to do!)

Completely ripping off Mr. Schenkenberg, and also in homage to him, here's a little activity. I've got some blurbs, with links to the actual books. See if you can guess which book each blurb describes. Wheeee!


"One is never far from a phrase that feels so acute and so true that it seems to be expressing an essential truth of the soul hewn out of primordial psychological matter."
- the London Times



"A page-turner in the most expansive sense of the word: Its gripping plot pushes readers forward...[ ] is a reader's writer, with sentences so cozy they'll wrap you up and kiss you goodnight." - The Chicago Tribune


And finally, one book, two quotes:

"One of the few books I have been able to read in recent years." - William Burroughs

"A terrifying and marvelous book." - Roald Dahl

Skol, baby.

The Twins' Justin Morneau fairly dominated all-star weekend, first winning the Home Run Derby (even if Josh Hamilton broke the record for most dingers in a single round), and then, in the bottom of the 15th inning of the All-Star Game, he tagged up on a sacrifice fly to right and hustled his buns to score the winning run, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief because they could finally go to bed.

Skol.

The duration of the game was four hours, and fifty minutes. The two main developments as the innings grew later were that the New York fans' resentment against the Red Sox players lessened, and it became increasingly apparent that Joe Buck is a better salesman than play-by-play announcer. ("This National League line-up is brought to you by Taco Bell...Think outside the bun...Up first...")

If you include the time spent on announcing the All-Stars, the starting line-ups, the hall-of-famers, and the national anthem, the broadcast lasted well over six hours. I thought to myself, ‘I could've read a book.'

Though I suppose that's not so different from normal. And it's not necessarily an impulse I act on as often as I might suggest. But in this specific case, it got me thinking about some of the great novels that have been written about baseball.

I'm pretty sure, actually, that my initial interest in reading may have been helped along by Mark Harris' quartet of baseball books, narrated by Henry Wiggins, pitcher for the fictional New York Mammoths: Bang the Drum Slowly, The Southpaw, A Ticket for a Seamstitch, and It Looked Like For Ever. I was a fairly prolific baseball card collector, and of course regarded Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek as heroes. Harris' novels were the first glimpses I had into the sort of dirty underside of baseball (pre-steroids, probably). His characters are always stuck in cramped trains or seedy hotel rooms, if I remember correctly. Not surprisingly, I was a lousy ballplayer, and it wasn't long before I realized that I'd have an easier time accessing the game through prose than through my (lack of) muscles.

This year, there are a few notable baseball books that have been spawned right here in Minnesota.

First off, you've got Peter Schilling's The End of Baseball (came out in April), in which a team that ‘almost was' becomes real. Set in 1944, the wily promoter Bill Veeck hustles his way into owning the Philadelphia Athletics, and in hopes of bringing home the pennant he gets rid of all the team's white players and recruits the stars of the Negro League. The cast of characters includes Walter Winchell, J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Campenella, and Satchell Paige. From the Baltimore Sun: "To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, some baseball novels see things as they are and ask why; Peter Schilling Jr.'s brilliantly conceived The End of Baseball sees things that weren't and imagines what could have been. The best baseball novel so far this century."

Then, in a couple months, you can check out hometown boy Bill Meissner's Spirits in the Grass. From the flap: "In Spirits in the Grass we meet Luke Tanner, a thirty-something baseball player helping to build a new baseball field in his beloved hometown of Clearwater, Wisconsin. Luke looks forward to trying out for the local amateur team as soon as possible. His chance discovery of a small bone fragment on the field sets in motion a series of events and discoveries that will involve his neighbors, local politicians, and the nearby Native American reservation." Meissner's earlier collection, Hitting into the Wind can tide you over until then.

What else?
Of course there's Bernard Malamud's The Natural (that link goes to a 1952 review of the book), about the prodigious Roy Hobbs whose career is sidetracked first by a crazed fan, and then by disease. I heard a story that when Malamud saw the film version - starring Robert Redford - for the first time, he sat in the theater as the credits rolled, and cried because they'd ruined his book. If you read it, you'll understand why. (Hobbs is also used as an entity in some Peanuts strips.)

Then there's Philip Roth's The Great American Novel, concerning the Patriot League's Ruppert Mundys - the only homeless big-league ball team in American history. The players include Gil Gamesh, "the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire," and John Baal, the Babe Ruth of the Big House, who never hit a home run while sober.

Those are the ones that ring my bells. Or something. Here is a more comprehensive list that's worth checking out. And as always, feel free to add your own favorites below.

Just for good measure: Skol.

I live over by Kenwood Elementary School...and steal their wireless Internet signal from time to time...somewhat by accident...Anyway, they've been doing a lot of construction on the school this summer. Right now they're working on replacing the windows, I think, and there's a big yellow cherry picker that goes up and down the side of the building, and a guy who takes out the old frames and puts in the new ones and then, I imagine, eventually washes the panes.

I've been watching this for a few days now, and then read this poem by Stephen Dunn, from his Pulitzer-winning collection Different Hours, which shares the same central image. Buy it here. His work, to my mind, is filled with big themes, and tempered descriptions of them. Like all fantastic poets, he has a knack for pointing out those things we all know about, but don't necessarily notice until someone explains how amazing they are. Different Hours largely has a somber tone to it, which Dunn explains, somewhat coyly, is the result of his being an optimist (because he always expects good things to happen, he's often let down).

Better than I'm able to set a background for the poem, perhaps the poet himself, will explain a bit about his work.

The following is taken from an interview with Guernica:

Dunn: But the world is always somewhat vicious. I take that as a given, but at various times in various circumstances that fact will be no more than a shadow or an echo behind the poem. Other times it will be more manifest. I try to write myself into articulations of half-felt, half-known feelings, without program. I'm always working toward getting my world and, hopefully, the world outside of me into a version that makes sense of it. Viciousness requires the same precision as love does.

And this is from an interview with Nightsun, Frostburg State University's litmag.

Dunn: The notion of restraint and extravagance has interested me for a while, I think especially because I tend to be someone who is temperamentally restrained. The great danger for somebody like me is that he might employ restraint out of habit, as opposed to employing it to heighten effects. I think restraint matters when it is harnessing something of size, something a little uncontrollable, something wild. I use the example of Fred Astaire, who seemed to me and to everybody, always under control. He was really using his skill to regulate emotion and to keep out the extra gestures that make art feel false.
I like the poets of extravagance too. I love Whitman, I love Ginsberg's "Howl," but I'm just not that kind of expansive poet.

 

So here it is:


"Men in the Sky"

Leaves are falling as the telephone men
ascend to the tops of poles.
They are riding a magic long-armed
machine. No need anymore to climb.
To speak through wires is as natural now
as falling leaves, natural as men in the sky.
The telephone men in the cupped palm
of the long arm are reducing the static,
helping me reach far out of town.
They are beautiful in their hard orange
plumage. Finches and cardinals: mere birds
by comparison, unchangeable, nervous.
It's a shame the men must come down.
I stood next to them at the 7-Eleven
at lunch break, heard them order ham
and cheese on a hard roll, Dr. pepper.
I saw them get out of their trucks
and spit. Now the leaves graze
their shoulders suddenly more golden
for having touched them. My phone
is ringing. It's one of the telephone men,
the highest, the one with a sufficiency
of tools around his waist, calling to see
if everything's all right. Everything isn't.

For all this talk about the decline of literary reading in America, there's really been very little offered in the way of solution. As per usual, I'm probably unqualified to be writing this (caveats seem to have worked for Britt; maybe they will for me too), but I think I have an idea that might possibly save the book world: Better advertising. At the very least, it's worth a shot.

I think it's time that publishing houses – Penguin, Random House, Harcourt, et al – take seriously the notion that the American entertainment economy is saturated and competitive (duh...) and therefore that books shouldn't be competing against other books; rather books as a medium should be competing against movies as a medium, or music, or porn, or anything else that might take time away from reading.

If this is already their mindset – many of them are incorporated, after all – then they need to pull their heads out of their asses and be more effective. Where do I see advertisements for books? In the New Yorker, in the New York Times Book Review, in Harper's, in literary journals - places readers already are. And while there's something to be said for targeting your audience, in order to thrive, I would think you need to attract some new customers.

According to tradition, a potential convert to Judaism is supposed to be turned away by a rabbi – three times. If that person persists in his effort to convert after the third rejection, he is considered serious enough about the faith, finally, to be allowed in. The publishing world seems to make their barriers similarly ridiculously high; advertising, like religion, is a means to access mass amounts of people, but literary advertising seems to confine itself only to people already of the faith, so to speak. In Judaism, we bitch about intermarriage diluting and possibly annihilating the religion. Likewise, the publishing world bitches about the reallocation of words from the well-regarded print periodicals to poorly edited blogs (hi!).

 

But neither Judaism nor literature, it seems, proactively recruit fresh constituents. Is it elitism? Is reading something so holy that it shouldn't need to be marketed? Something so inherently valuable that people should flock to it of their own accord, and any need for a commercial here and there is preposterous? Yes. But then there's reality to deal with.

Right now the most vibrant literary events in Minneapolis are the Books and Bars series, Talking Volumes, Talk of the Stacks, and the existence of The Loft. (Doubtless there's some great stuff I'm leaving out, like the reading series at Spoon River ... feel free to PR and big-up yourself in the comments section below, and I'll throw in a hyperlink if you don't. I'm making a different point, though ... right ... about ... now:) As far as I know, these goings-on are funded by independent bookstores, bars, the library system, and MPR – not by Random House, Penguin, and so on.

Meanwhile, the most effective advertising for books is done, I think, by Amazon, which tells me what books I might like, based on what books I've previously bought. Again, the publishing houses aren't behind this, I don't think – rather it's simply Amazon's self-interest in promoting sales.

Furthermore, it seems publishers are incompetent with the money they actually have for marketing. Last night, best-selling author/sometimes-musician Darin Strauss was in town to promote his new novel, More Than It Hurts You. About fifteen people showed up at the Galleria Barnes & Noble to hear him speak. Maybe five of them, he estimated, bought his book -– totaling roughly $125 for penguin, minus B&N's take, minus cost of printing, etc. This, Strauss said, was a fairly typical turn-out for his current tour. He explained that the real intent of an author tour is to generate publicity, via interviews and reviews on local radio stations and in local newspapers.

But, aside from this amazing piece of writing, Strauss had nothing lined up in the Twin Cities. Neither the Strib nor the Pioneer Press has yet run a review of the book, nor did he get on the radio. I think City Pages mentioned he was coming in a blurb on their A-List.

And yet he was here, which means Penguin (his publisher) shelled out for his flight, his hotel, and a hired car to take him to his reading. That's got to be getting close to $600, if not more. There are about twenty stops on his tour. This is money that could be spent buying print or radio or television or (gasp) movie preview slots to advertise, which one hopes could generate more than five book sales.

So – and feel free to amend – a few thoughts on what publishing companies can do to help save books in the modern world, without resorting to E-Books, God willing:

- Take a big chunk of the money allotted for author tours (except in cities guaranteed to get a big audience draw) and spend it on advertising.

- In the short term, forget specific authors and books, and do a good campaign promoting books in general, with a heavy, heavy emphasis on literary novels by current authors.

- Advertise in ways that will draw new readers. (Oprah's great for having her book club, but it's a little scary that she's the pre-eminent bookseller of our times.) This may take some thought. Product placement? We're all suckers for it, anyway. So why not?

- Merchandising! On The Road - the Toilet Paper Scroll. Are you telling me you couldn't have a Holden Caulfield action figure, which actually broods? A Lolita doll? Or less perverse toys thereof?

- A rough idea: Fuck hardcovers! I'm not sure what their function is anymore, except to make people not buy books. Fairly frequently I hear someone browsing the new releases section at Magers and Quinn and hear, "Oh, I'll just wait until it's in paperback." Yeah, buddy – I bet you will. I'm not sure this testing-of-the-market to see if it justifies a paperback run is useful anymore. With the advances of immediate and on-demand publishing, why not just spend an extra nickel on a more-endurable paperback to begin with (Penguin Classics-type quality), and use the extra cash on, I don't know, more advertising.

- Community involvement. If Target can sponsor free museum days, Random House can sponsor outreach programs, too. According to me, at least.
Check this: Even B&N and Borders are struggling now in the giant commercial suction cup that is the Internet. The dominant bookstores soon might be those that people feel personal connections to. So maybe instead of paying to put shitty cardboard displays with books We've All Been Meaning To Read up front, publishers should finance Independent Bookstore Community Involvement Stuff. What about a tutoring program inside a bookstore? Kids could get help with their English homework for free and get comfy with the environment of must and dust. Booksellers and publishers would be seen as giving back to their communities (more than they already do simply by peddling great books). If the program were two days a week for two hours, you could pay one employee (if volunteers are unavailable) probably less than $10,000 a year. Would other infrastructure be needed? I'm sure English teachers would promote it to parents. Just a thought.

One last cheap tie-in to religion: Without playing the advertising game, reading looks to be going the way of Reform Judaism – something its practitioners respect, and probably hope to pass on to their children, but which is really only observed once or twice a year.