Ebooks are changing the way we read, and the way novelists write

[Dave Monroe]

I can't keep my coupons, receipts, bus schedules, lottery tickets,
postage stamps, business cards, take-out menus, postcards, newspaper
clippings, u.s.w., et soforthiam in an e-reader ...

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 7:42 AM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:
> I love my kindle fire. If anything, I read more. If I hear an interview with
> an author, or read a review in the Sunday paper, I can quickly download a
> sample to see if it is something I want to read all of. The same goes for
> recommendations from friends (or the P-list).
>
> I like having the built in dictionary. I can click on a word and get the
> definition, or go further to wikipedia or web search. It increases the depth
> of my reading. I have no trouble becoming immersed. My wife calls it "the
> Black Hole". Since I usually keep a dictionary or three handy when reading
> anything demanding, it's not much different. Just easier.
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 7:37 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Ebooks are changing the way we read, and the way novelists write
>> Paul Mason
>> Monday 10 August 2015 06.35 EDT
>>
>> Our attention spans have shortened, we’re distracted, and authors have
>> changed their style to suit, but these changes are part of the wider
>> digital transformationI
>>
>>
>> If you hand me the original paperback edition of Thomas Pynchon’s
>> Gravity’s Rainbow I can, quickly and without too much scrabbling, find
>> you the page where the hero loses the girl. My disappointment on his
>> behalf has lingered physically on that page for the past 20 years....
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> Yet with the coming of ebooks, the world of the physical book, read so
>> many times that your imagination can “inhabit” individual pages, is
>> dying. I’m not the only person in my circle who has stopped buying new
>> books in anything other than digital form, and even the cherished
>> books described above are now re-read, when I need to, on Kindle.
>>
>> But what is the ebook doing to the way we read? And how, in turn, are
>> the changes in the way millions of us read going to affect the way
>> novelists write? This is not just a question for academics; you only
>> have to look at people on a beach this summer to see how influential
>> fiction remains, and how, if its narratives were to change radically,
>> our self-conception might also change.
>>
>> In Words Onscreen, published this year, the American linguist Naomi
>> Baron surveyed the change in reading patterns that digital publishing
>> has wrought. Where the impact can be measured, it consists primarily
>> of a propensity to summarise. We read webpages in an “F” pattern: the
>> top line, scroll down a bit, have another read, scroll down. Academics
>> have reacted to the increased volume of digitally published papers by
>> skim-reading them. As for books, both anecdotal and survey evidence
>> suggests that English literature students are skim-reading set works
>> by default.
>>
>> The attention span has shortened not just because ebooks consist of a
>> continuous, searchable digital text, but because they are being read
>> on devices we use for other things....
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> In turn, in so far as form and business models has reacted to such
>> behaviour, fiction has become shorter....
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> What I think the literary academics are worried about is the loss of
>> immersiveness. If I list the books I would save from a burning house –
>> or an exploding Kindle – they all create worlds in which one can
>> become immersed: Pynchon, Grossmann, Marquez, Lawrence Durrell in the
>> Alexandria Quartet, Peter Carey in almost everything.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> It’s probably too soon to generalise but my guess is, if you scooped
>> up every book – digital and analogue – being read on a typical
>> Mediterranean beach, and cut out the absolute crap, you’d be left with
>> three kinds of writing: first, “literary” novels with clearer plots
>> and than their 20th century predecessors, less complex prose, fewer
>> experiments with fragmented perception; second, popular novels with a
>> high degree of writerly craft (making the edges of the first two
>> categories hard to define); third, literary writing about reality –
>> the confessional autobiography, the diary of a journalist, highly
>> embroidered reportage about a legendary event.
>>
>> Somewhere among them is probably a novel that will impact as indelibly
>> on the teenager reading it as Pynchon and Grossman impacted on me. But
>> here’s the difference.
>>
>> I remember reading novels because the life within them was more
>> exciting, the characters more attractive, the freedom more
>> exhilarating than anything in the reality around me, which seemed
>> stultifying, parochial and enclosed.
>>
>> To a kid reading Pynchon on a Galaxy 6 this summer, it has to compete
>> with Snapchat and Tinder, plus movies, games and music. Sure, that kid
>> can no longer see what other people are reading on the beach – whether
>> its Proust or 50 Shades – but they can see in great detail what people
>> in their social network are recommending. Life itself has become more
>> immersive. That’s what writers are really up against.
>>
>>
>> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/10/ebooks-are-changing-the-way-we-read-and-the-way-novelists-write
>>
>> Words Onscreen
>> The Fate of Reading in a Digital World
>> Naomi S. Baron
>>
>> http://global.oup.com/academic/product/words-onscreen-9780199315765
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l