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

[Dave Monroe]

... also, http://www.theonion.com/article/man-reading-pynchon-on-bus-takes-pains-to-make-cov-3192
...

Books, comic book t-shirts + vintage airline flight bags are my only
fashion accessories ...

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 7:53 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l