Got contacted by a journalist in Adelaide for some dial a quote material for a feature piece she is writing. Below are the questions and my responses. The elephant in the room whenever someone wonders about the future of the book is that what they really mean is the future of the novel, as the novel is very nearly the only textual form that historically developed with, from, and in concert with the book. Poetry does not need the book, except as a vehicle for dissemination, drama doesn’t. But the novel, as a long and complex literary form, requires the need to store, deliver and arrange a truck full of words in a particular order.
1. Where do you see literature heading?
I think literature will stay literature, if by that we understand literature to be about fictional things that writers make with words. The book will remain the most important form for a long time. That is where the prestige lies, and is still what people want to own, collect, feel and read. Which, by they way, is how we treat authors too (which is why we have writer’s festivals so we can collect, feel and touch as nearly as we are allowed). However, this is literature, which is largely and historically about fictional things with words, which historically has been marks on paper. There are, and will be, significant works of literature that will exist outside of paper (after all Homer’s work was not, originally, written, that happened later, we can say the same thing about the original fairytales that the Brothers Grimm transcribed), but for now they will stay at the margins. For me, if literature is about fictional things with words (and I think it is) then whether it is book or electronic is not particularly important (I have not heard anyone claim that an audio book, for example, is not literature!) as far as it being literature is concerned, but for many of us who read, we are also attached to the object, and that still matters.
2. Are books finished? Why?
Books are finished if we understand that books refers to things printed on paper and bound and covered. If I’m a tax accountant would I prefer how many volumes of tax law on my shelves, or it electronic, searchable, able to be immediately cross referenced, annotated with links to appropriate case law? A doctor is in the same position. Also a car mechanic. As a student do I want to carry my 12 required books or have them all on my iPad, where again they can be annotated, searched, automatically updated with new material, and have links out to other examples? The only place where books are not dead is for literature, because historically literature has had a love affair with the book as a particular sort of thing. It is important to realise that the only people who are culturally invested in the book as a particular sort of thing of cultural value in itself are those interested in literature. For the rest of us books are just a package for information which has passed its use by date for most of us.
3. What have been the main ways that the internet has affected writing?
The internet has returned writing to front and centre of all that we do. It was not that long ago that there were enormous (misplaced) anxieties about how television was causing the decline of reading, and literacy, and would lead to a decline in writing. Along came the internet. We write email, send status updates to Facebook or Twitter, self publish our blogs, leave comments on YouTube clips. It is all writing. And if you want to be one of the powerful creatives online then you need to know how to write code, where elegance, simplicity, clarity and the qualities that separate out average coders from the great ones. It is writing all the way down.
Many think that the internet, a bit like SMS, has encouraged very abbreviated styles or forms of writing that, because it is so brief, can’t say very much. However, just as literature as forms like the aphorism, or even the haiku, which gain their value from the brevity. The best blogs, twitter writing and so on share the same qualities as the best literature, and are judged the same way. The difference, perhaps, is that we don’t only use blogs, email and twitter to write literature.
4. What do e-books mean for the industry – are they good or bad? Do they spell the end or do they offer a life-line?
E-books were attempted around a decade ago and failed dismally. The current generation are quite different, mainly because the technology has improved to the extent where they can start to appeal and be relevant to people who read literature (and not just books) and not just early adopter geeks. E-books do not offer a life line because for literature, because in most cases there is no compelling reason to buy the e-book version over the print edition. It is much like early cinema where once sound was introduced there was a mistaken view that filmed plays would be the way to go. Once cinema started to teach itself what it could do with sound, and how it was not a stage play, there was a reason to go to a sound film. I believe it will be the same with e-books. Someone will write an e-book that is an e-book all the way down, not a translation of a print text to the screen, but something that works as a literary experience and does things that can only be done because it is on an e-book. It might now about where you are, or which pages you read more slowly, or what you read last week, or how other people are reading the same book, and do things because of all these things. Who knows. But someone will get this right, and shortly after it will seem obvious that this is what you would do when writing an e-book.
5. Does blogging diminish or strengthen the work of traditional authors?
I believe blogging would help an author in terms of their marketing of themselves – and after all it is useful to remember that while publishers like to trumpet their cultural contributions they remain, at the end of the day, venture capitalists – which should never be underestimated. Reputation has always mattered, fundamentally so for authors, and today one of the strongest ways to define and manage your reputation is through your blog. Blogging is also writing, and writers need to write, but I don’t think blogging in itself helps or doesn’t help an author be an author.
6. Will we all still be reading in 100 years time?
We will still be reading books in 100 years time, just as we still listen to music from a 100 years ago, and we watch films from a 100 years ago. Some of these will not be read as books but electronically – it just won’t make sense to print, store and then distribute physical objects that only consist of words. I think film is a useful example here, only a small group of academics and aficionados’ care if the film they watch is on celluloid, for the vast majority of us VHS tape, DVD or online will do just fine thanks. But we still watch them and we still think we’re watching a film. So we will still be reading literature, but outside of academics and a similarly small group of afficiandos the vast majority of us won’t care if it is electronic or on dead trees.
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