The Death of Reading?

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Brian McCary notes:
" A Steven King novel or                
a Tom Clancy novel may be successfully translated to the screen: these books
are really movies which got lost (sometimes only temporarily) on the way
to the cinema.  Big books are relished for their challenge, and their readers
enjoy wallowing and mucking their way through them, as is attested to by the
last dozen or so posts.  This same approach does not work well with movies
as they exist today.
 
If a potter takes months to create the perfect vase, he has used skills that
only those who have tried it or who have studied hundereds of vases can
appreciate.  If he does so with the intent to communicate a difficult idea
to a few (instead of a simpler idea to the many), then the small audience
is not a tragedy, it is a testement to his skill."


There are probably more good writers writing now than at any time in history,
but literature as a social center for discussion, outrage, celebration has
largely lost its force to be displaced, as Brian notes, by other media.

It's interesting, though, how many "popular" writers--including King, many
SF authors, etc.--at least pay lip service to the literary canon, however
one defines it.

But similar points might be made about other media as well.  Aside from the
occasional crossover film that gets a following from controversy or
notoreity, most alternative (i.e., independent or foreign) films have small,
if dedicated, followings.  The mass audience tends to prefer its stories
straight-up, no chaser.  But that's what makes these all "mass" media to
begin with.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)