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

[John Bailey]

Maybe it's a both-and.

I like my little e-reader (perhaps because it was given to me as a
present). I don't read much on it, but I have lots of free book
previews and long articles I've downloaded that I finally get to read
when I have a break out of town. But I also like the dog-ears and
weird notes I've left in old books I pull down from the shelves on
occasion. How good is it to wonder why the hell you cared to fold the
corner of a particular page ten or twenny years ago!? I am left agog
at who I once was.

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 10:54 PM, Dave Monroe
<against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> ... 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/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l