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Deborah Willis: Will e-books be the death of prose?
September 4, 2010 | 8:50 pm
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By Chris Meadows
On Publishing Perspectives, I’ve noticed an editorial by Deborah Willis that reads almost like a response to our recent post by C. A. Bridges on print vs. paper books (though of course they were written completely independently of each other). Bridges admits that a number of things can be done with the physical artifacts that are paper books that can’t be done with e-books, as a reader he finds he prefers the electronic version.
Deborah Willis, on the other hand, is concerned about the essential nature of printed books becoming diluted or vanishing as a result of migration to electronic pages.
In a world where people read on electronic devices, books may become mash-ups of media, including music, video, and possibly advertising. (Advertising in ebooks is of particular concern if we distribute them for “free” or nearly free.) An electronic, interactive Alice in Wonderland is an incredible thing, and I’m intrigued by the possibilities of the technology. But the electronic Alice may be closer to a video game than to Lewis Carroll’s original. So perhaps I simply have a problem with the vocabulary: can something that is not bound, not made of paper, and not necessarily meant to be read –– can that thing still be called a book?
She points out that the architecture of the web, built on links and hypertext, intended to facilitate jumping around, is at odds with the nature of books that are mostly meant to be read from beginning to end.
While there is still some of the same sentimental attachment to the old for which I like to poke fun at other writers (especially those who bring up smell as a determining factor), Willis does make some good points. Right now, e-books are mostly a new way to present the same old prose we get in print. But as time goes on and multimedia gadgets like the iPad become the order of the day, will stand-alone prose fade away in favor of multimedia?
And if so, how good or bad a thing is it?
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Ms Willis appears to be confusing the medium with the message. Chesterton’s prose is not any less amusing on a Kobo, a Kindle or a dog-eared copy taken down from the cottage shelf that’s been thumbed through many times whilst sitting on the dock by the bay ….
If words matter — and I certainly hope they do to a professional writer — then whether words are presented in pulp edition paperbacks or on e-ink e-book screens, they are still the same words. The same words that are gateways to our imaginations and lead us on wonderful adventures of the mind, emotion and soul.
And there’s a side benefit, rarely highlighted, about e-readers: these devices are single-purpose vessels designed for easily acquiring, and consuming, books. Some do allow for magazines and newspapers and blogs; some even half-heartedly let you surf the web … if you’re that desperate. But where they excel is in longer form works — like novels — and that’s what the bulk of enthusiasts (and users) are reading. And surprisingly, many of us are reading even more than ever because e-books/e-readers are convenient, inexpensive and, yes, fun to use.
While I’m certainly sympathetic to her fears, I get annoyed when people tell me what books are like. Yes, I understand that ebooks don’t evoke the same feelings for you, but I’d like such writers to also understand that for many people, most definitely me included, ebooks can have just as much an effect. In the future, please add “for me” to end of all such sweeping statements and we’ll get along wonderfully.
She’s also concerned with books becoming multimedia productions, ignoring the fact that very few books will be worth that sort of expensive development and the text of such classics as Alice in Wonderland will still be available. I like Gardner’s Annotated Alice but if I just want to read the story I’d never use that version. I submit that the vast bulk of ebooks will be just that, text on a screen, no movie clips or interactive cartoons or what-have-you.
I have read e-books on the beach on my iPod Touch, by the way. Works nicely.
Storytelling existed long before Gutenberg (or monks madly scribbling away) or even before the library at Alexandria. It exists now and far into the future as anyone can see.
All that is changing is the container for the stories. For prose.
And how long have books actually been the “container” for stories for most people anyway? When did books become common? Something sold at the corner bookstore? A hundred years? Less?
In the scheme of things, books are a new invention.
I do not expect that e-books will be the death of prose. I would agree that words are still words, and when presented in their pristine form, a simple linear stream, that they will retain their impact even in translation across media.
But I don’t think for a moment that those very words themselves, not the e-books that contain them, are safe, are not in danger. The question, I think, is not whether e-books will be the death of prose, but whether multimedia will kill prose itself. Terminally. Permanently. Forever.
This transition is happening right now, today. It’s not something to worry about that might happen in some distant future. It’s something that has already begun. And I worry that we won’t be able to stop it because either nobody sees it or nobody cares enough to do anything. And perhaps nothing can be done.
I worry that we’re seeing a generation coming of age that has been steeped in an Internet/cellphone/video-laden world to such an extent that they prefer _not_ to read. It’s all about things like YouTube and Twitter and Netflix. And no, Twitter is not about reading. Twitter is about reading as little as possible.
And the economics are not at issue. No one _wants_ to make “Alice in Wonderland” into a multimedia work. No one under thirty would even glance at it. They’re too busy grabbing their web cams and shooting endless hours of mind numbing Extreme Sports clips to show to their Facebook friends. For free.
“Books? You mean like.. read? Are you effin’ kiddin’ me, dude? But didja see the new Jackass 3D movie? Aw sh*t, man, it was effin’ awesome! When that one guy got on that …” et cetera…
I try not to think about it too often. It makes me cry.
It was twenty years ago when people were all exited about hyperfiction, or hypertext fiction, or nonlinear fiction. Mostly I don’t think it went anywhere. If multimedia ebooks work, they work, but won’t replace linear texts anymore than the hyper ones did a generation ago. And as has been pointed out, it has nothing to do with e-ink on a screen vs. ink on paper.
@dd: You know, a funny thing happens to the “are you effin’ kiddin’ me, dude?” folks … they tend to grow up, eventually. Not everyone; but most of them. Older generations have been bemoaning the new generation at least since the written record of the classical Greeks; you’ll find a “tut, tut, now” in Plato without having to look too far.
Reading, absorbing and being able to act upon longer form texts is not a skill lost on the thumbed-generation over-stimulated as it is with its Blackberry’s and Xbox controllers. It just shows up a little later — perhaps in later years at college and certainly once a career has begun.
Not everyone in the future will read for pleasure and enlightenment; but many will. Literacy, in spite of Twitter, is growing around the planet. So, put away the Kleenex and relax into a good e-book, will ya?
Radio didn’t kill reading. TV didn’t kill reading. Reading itself has only been something the masses could enjoy for a couple of hundred years or so – used to be, only a small percentage of the population was literate and books were expensive and rarely found in the average household. Public libraries are a relatively recent innovation in human history. Deep breath…
Thirty years ago, many authors swore they’d never give up their trusty typewriters for those newfangled word processors. They’d lose the tactile sense of a letter crashing into paper, creating an indelible moment of writing. They’d… Maybe the smell was there too. Anyway, I don’t know any writers who don’t use word processors now. Small publishers, at least, aren’t even set up to receive type-written manuscripts. Technology moves on and it’s human for our initial reaction to be a desire to cling to the familiar.
I do think there’s a deeper issue involving reading… will young people read novels or will they spend their lives exchanging information-free sound-bytes on social media or playing videogames? Sticking with paper is likely to guarantee an answer but not the answer paper advocates want to believe.
Rob Preece
Publisher
That is not even the proper question to be asking.
The proper question is *how* will ebooks alter creative writing. eBooks are real. They exist and are not going to vanish in a puff of smoke and brimstone. No amount of handwringing and FUD is going to change that. And by their existence they are going to change the craft and business of writing.
The smart will look for ways to adapt and use the new possibilities creatively; it could be as simple as letting a story determine its own length, not some publisher’s print costs, or as complex as what the proponets of non-sequential story-telling envision. Me, I think we’ll see a lot of experimenting and a lot of supplementing and absolutely *zero* killing of anything.
The word hysteria comes to mind.
Oh dear .. another “Death of ..”. I guess we will continue to have to endure more and more of these into the future as technology changes so much.
As I read this one I start off thinking the usual ‘how much rubbish’, ‘it’s the writing NOT the medium!” etc etc.
But then I started to think how sad it is for these people who have allowed themselves to become so emotionally attached to the medium and not the writing. I mean it is really is sad. It makes me wonder how much attention they really pay to the writing at all?
I read all of Ms Willis’ article and found it utterly bemusing. Her little competition between paper books and eReaders seems to me to come out in favour of eReaders hands down, but she claims the opposite. Then she gets carried away with the fear of books becoming mashed up with other media, as if Great Expectations will become inevitably infected by nasty videos in the middle of chapter five.
Her interpretation of the web, as having been built for information and content alone, is also such a strange and inaccurate thing to suggest.
I really think this lady does not have any real understanding of modern devices, modern computers, the internet, the web. She does not appear to be able to differentiate between medium and content or grasp what it means to read a story independent of the experience of the medium holding that story.
If “Emma by Jane Austen” was printed on a roll of kitchen roll, would it be any less of a fantastic read ? would it lose it’s power as a story ? what about on a pack of large playing cards ? or any other media ? I suggest that it would not lose an iota of it’s power.
To suggest that reading Emma on an LED screen is in any way different is beyond wrong – it is utter twaddle!
I see a lady who has enormous problems dealing with change. This is at the heart of her anxiety. But modern life all about change; from cash to credit cards, from wired brick phones to tiny mobile cell phones, from horses to cars.
As I said at the outset I guess we will have to suffer this kind of thing on a more or less continuous basis for the next 20 years. It will get utterly tedious I imagine …..
Define a “book” and maybe we can have a conversation about it. The root word originally came from carving into trees. Hard to carry that around.
Scott Nicholson
http://www.hauntedcomputer.com