It might be discouraging to think of literature as the distraction of last resort, Mr. Reyes-Gavilan said. "But if we have to trick people into reading, we're happy to do that."
Incidentally, here's the current summer reading list:
fiction
*Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Collected Novellas
*Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
*Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
*Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
*Albert Camus, The Stranger
nonfiction
*Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate
*William Zinsser, On Writing Well
*Robert Harwell Fiske, The Dimwit's Dictionary
*Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness
*Leslie Baldacci, Inside Mrs. B's Classroom
*Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything
I'll have reviews up as I finish. And here's the wager: I'll have them all done by August 15th, or I'll chew and digest a page of Melville. Try that, Sir Francis Bacon.
[update: Starred entries are complete, which means reviews are on the way...]
[update: They're all done, and weeks ahead of schedule. I have too much free time.]
11 comments:
"Language is access to power."
Really? That's the best argument you can come up with for reading?
Why not "Language is access to truth"? or "Language is access to other people"?
Most simply: what good is knowing the truth if nothing is done with it?
Note that I never state that "access to power" is the only reason to read--there are many. Enjoyment, self-discovery, "other"-discovery, expansion of one's personal knowledge, time-wasting, and countless other tangential benefits. Maybe it's my background in debate, student government, and college journalism that causes me to emphasize the political function--because language is not only a way of finding truth, but a way of obscuring it, a means of oppression through ignorance. (I was also heavily influenced by Orwell's seminal essay, Politics and the English Language, many years ago.) "Speaking truth to power," obviously, requires truth. But it doesn't stop there.
No, you didn't claim that "power" is the only reason to read. But you did tout it as THE reason to be concerned that people aren't reading anymore. I take it as an empirical point that language is used for power. I also take it as an empirical point that language was not designed to be used for power. In fact, I take this usage to be indicative of Augustine's famous libido dominandi (take that, Orwell!). It's my hunch that the more sinful people are, the more they use language to gain power. Orwell seems right--language not only signals corruption, but corrupts. But if it corrupts, why can't it redeem? Maybe we should read books to make us more holy. Maybe that's why a decline in literacy is problematic--if people don't read words, they'll never read The Word.
I see a definite negative connotation in your use of the word "power." It harkens back to Lord Acton's pronouncement, and is cemented in its negativity by connection to Augustine's libido dominandi. Some questions, then. Is the use of power necessarily derived from the lust for power? In other words, is there no just use of authority? Is there something sinful in the act of writing a letter to the editor, preparing a resume, preaching to a crowd, voting, using a coupon, reading directions, keeping a diary? These are the multiple senses in which language allows access to power--the ability to effect change in oneself, in others, or in the world. I think we're at cross purposes with our use of that (quite loaded) word.
By the way, when'll *you* be blogging again? Mere Orthodoxy just isn't the same withoutcha.
I see a definite negative connotation in your use of the word "power." It harkens back to Lord Acton's pronouncement, and is cemented in its negativity by connection to Augustine's libido dominandi. Some questions, then. Is the use of power necessarily derived from the lust for power? In other words, is there no just use of authority? Is there something sinful in the act of writing a letter to the editor, preparing a resume, preaching to a crowd, voting, using a coupon, reading directions, keeping a diary? These are the multiple senses in which language allows access to power--the ability to effect change in oneself, in others, or in the world. I think we're at cross purposes with our use of that (quite loaded) word.
Actually, Lord Acton's pronouncement was the furthest from my mind. Political power is a specific kind of power, one that (as has been pointed out often) is clearly used to inappropriate ends. There is nothing "sinful" about any of the activities described. Shoot, I would argue that there is nothing inherently sinful about any human action. The broader Christian tradition has approved political involvement and the use of political power. However, it has paradoxically sought to put power in the hands of those who don't seek it--hence the virtue of humility. This might account for my skepticism that the use of this power is the best reason to read.
I am hoping to start blogging again soon. I am starting a little business and it is incredibly time consuming. As soon as I can start reading again, I'll start blogging.
Indeed, the power of communication seems to have been oriented, historically, towards getting ideas faster and faster to where they "need" to go. Anyone who had compliatons of books, and even a postal service, probably hod power, if not prestige.
The mentallity of "TeeVee" and "celluarable phones" being more important than books stems from quotations like "Eventually, 1000 monkeys with a 1000 typewriters would write the complete works of Shakespeare" or the senario with a monkey giving a draft to an ediotor that ends with the monolouge "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?! That doesn't make sense! You idiot!" Literature and language have been linked to many types of power--The historical use of Latin and book burnings show how powerful it can be. But with books being displaced by modern-media smacks of the mentallity that books were convient storage and transportation of ideas--but now film does it much better.
I meant to make more sense than I did.
Literacy aren't dead. I done saw that commercial for Wal-Mart on the T.V., the one where the guy talks about not being able to do fancy book larnin', and then he was able to do fancy book larnin'. Then they had that thar country singer, singin 'bout literacyness, and such. Plus, with bestsellers, like them thar Da Vinci Code, by Dan'l Brown and the Revolutionary New Diet, by the late St. Robert Atkins, rest his soul, and that Little Red Book, by that Chinarman Feller, I forget his name. People done been reading them thar books. Just because them Hobbit books, been in them movies, don't mean its less meanin'full. Just because we aint' them 4 year college or University types, don't mean we aint as good as you.
"If your cup holds a quart, and mine don't hold but a pint, wouldn't it be mean not to let me have my little half measureful?"
Folk like you should stop lookin' down at folks like us. Just because we're difernt'
(Darn them multiple postin's.) I'm not certain film is a better conveyance of ideas than books--the experience is much more temporal, and as Herr Weasel, er, Michael Moore, shows, easily abused (pastiche together a few context-less images for maximum impact, and wham! Emeril-like badness). The real new mode of mass communicatin' is thisyer internet.
I'm not talking so much about better as I am about speed. If one looks at travel through both time and space, books were the best way to do it. Way back it was impossible to talk to people in the future or past, and certainly over great distances. Books had a better and more accurate chance of withstanding the test of time than oral tradition--and they could travel, unlike local tales of morality and cultural reinforcement. One could read about Greek social codes, in say....Alexandria, Carthage or Lundonium.
So the mentality of books may well have been "It gets ideas where they need to go." But mentality that carries over to modern communications better with movies, phones, and forums even. People want to express themselves, only to find that conversations most often run along the lines of "what's up?" "nothing much" etc...
Literacy isn't dead. Right now, enough people have some level of it, that its just redundant.
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