Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
In response to my post last week in which I favorably cited Albert Borgmann's notion of "focal activities," Rob Long spoke up for Ricochet's Whiggish Wing:
There is something a bit twee and fancy-pants about the items Professor Borgman chooses as "focal things" -- fly fishing; guitar; cooking -- and I think Trace has a point: if you're 14 years old, XBox Live probably fits that bill, too. It involves the body, the mind, and a worldwide community you're playing with. It's the modern version of those parks where people are playing chess.
Rob's response came to mind as I read Ross Douthat's terrific post on this essay by hyper-connected, oversharing New York novelist Gary Shteyngart, who complains that he can't just sit down and read a novel unless he cuts himself off from cell phone signals and goes on a twee, fancy-pants vision quest in the Upper Apparatchik mountains or wherever. Says Douthat:
...Consider Shteyngart’s escape through the lens of class for a moment, and think about what the world of constant connectivity means for the reading lives of people who can’t take Amtrak upstate to stay at “a sturdy summer cottage rebuilt by an ingenious Swedish woman” for weeks or months on end.
Ross is right to warn us that reading could become the next fly fishing: something certain rich people do to assure themselves and their peers of their own refinement while other people -- no less rich, perhaps -- express their calculated disdain so as not to be mistaken for that kind of snooty bastard. The class atmospherics alone could drag novels into irrelevance. One can, after all, have a great time fly fishing with gear purchased entirely at Walmart, but that's not the mythology.
Reading fiction rather than updating one's attention drip will probably come to be seen as a precious, conspicuous indulgence, like playing chess instead of XBox Live or eschewing day-glo PowerBait in favor of a Quill Gordon. Maybe even as retrograde as (per Rob's comment) preparing one's own meals.
As it happens, Shteyngart's essay hits awfully close to home. While trying to write this brief post, I refreshed my twitter feed approximately seven million times, hoping that some small pellet of novelty would drop down the chute into my tasteful luminescent Skinner Box (designed by Apple in California). I reloaded my Tumblr dashboard a few times too, and lo the Lord in his goodness did provide me with Bounteous Distraction. Bring it on home, Paul Graham:
The next 40 years will bring us some wonderful things. I don't mean to imply they're all to be avoided. Alcohol is a dangerous drug, but I'd rather live in a world with wine than one without. Most people can coexist with alcohol; but you have to be careful. More things we like will mean more things we have to be careful about.
Most people won't, unfortunately. Which means that as the world becomes more addictive, the two senses in which one can live a normal life will be driven ever further apart. One sense of "normal" is statistically normal: what everyone else does. The other is the sense we mean when we talk about the normal operating range of a piece of machinery: what works best.
These two senses are already quite far apart. Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.
I had more to say, but I'll leave it there.
- Comment (10)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (1)
Comments :
Jun '10
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
If you're bombarded by words everyday, written and spoken, it's hard to notice the gems. Words are words. The beautiful sentences of great writers sound vastly more beautiful inside remote lake cabins, where there's nothing else to do, Just as in the Arizona desert, cool water tastes like it came from the dessert tray of a five-star restaurant...no, even better.
May '10
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
A nice freeware app called Tweetdeck will make your Twitter experience infinitely more fruitful.
Television might have made novels slightly nerdy, but people who eschew books entirely are a minority. If TV couldn't relegate novels to intellectuals, then video games won't. The majority of gamers actually play less than two hours per day (compare that to TV viewing), which is why a major movement in the game industry in recent years has been to produce games that can be learned quickly and consumed in shorter sessions.
Smartphones and social networking will have a far greater effect on reading habits. One possibility is a revival of short stories and poetry (fiction that can be read and shared quickly and easily). But genres will be affected more than mediums (novels, non-fiction, etc).
Looking at the social stratification of games, one notices they are ordered by age: ancient > cards and dice > boardgames > video games. They're subordered by complexity (Chess > Checkers; Canasta > Solitaire). Books seem to be ordered more by profession and dependency on education: politics and philosphy > history > poetry > trade and technical > classic novels > popular fiction > short stories.
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
I neglected to say that everyone should follow Ross Douthat's links to Alan Jacobs' posts about Clay Shirky. Or just start here if you're interested.
May '10
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
I agree that technology provides more potential for distraction than ever before, and it will likely continue to do so. However, it is still within human capability to focus, and it is incumbent upon parents to teach their children this skill.
My eight year old son has an iPod touch and a Nintendo DS. We have a Wii in the living room, and he has a desktop computer to share with a younger brother. Yet, given his choice, he will read a novel or ride his bike over all electronic entertainment. In fact, at eight, he has the focus to read an entire Hardy Boys novel in one sitting.
Even my six year old son loves books and is captivated by stories. He also prefers bike riding, baseball, and soccer to electronic distraction.
I see reason to believe that humans can learn to manage technology and maintain an ability to focus and enjoy tactile interaction with our world, be that interaction twee or whiggish.
May '10
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
Leisure reading has always been a luxury for the leisure class. But the advent of technology through the ages (even beyond the invention of penicillin,) has increased the size of the leisure class so that now it is a relatively commonplace pursuit. The success of the novel will depend on its ability to compete for free time and whatever anti-elitist sentiment rampages through the population. I for one am unconcerned. Who knows, maybe the iPad will actually increase the consumption of fiction -- stranger things have happened. In the meantime, I would second Aaron's endorsement of Tweetdeck. It allows the Twitterstream to be tamed and used for good and should free you up to spend more highly productive time on Ricochet.
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
Devin Cole: [...] My eight year old son has an iPod touch and a Nintendo DS. We have a Wii in the living room, and he has a desktop computer to share with a younger brother. Yet, given his choice, he will read a novel or ride his bike over all electronic entertainment. In fact, at eight, he has the focus to read an entire Hardy Boys novel in one sitting.
Even my six year old son loves books and is captivated by stories. He also prefers bike riding, baseball, and soccer to electronic distraction.
I see reason to believe that humans can learn to manage technology and maintain an ability to focus and enjoy tactile interaction with our world, be that interaction twee or whiggish. · Jul 27 at 7:05am
You are a beacon, Devin. My son is 1 year old and I flatter myself that I can pull of what you've achieved. But I think the last word comes courtesy of Ricochet member PEG:
In the event that you left your magnifying glass in the other room, that says "I used to call people, then I got into e-mailing, then texting, and now I just ignore everyone."
May '10
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
Check in with us again when he's 12 Devin.
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
Before movies and TV, for hundreds of years, people didn’t sit at home at night and wonder what to do. They had plenty to do. They sat and talked and wrote letters. They gossiped with their friends. They read idly. They played music. They played card games. They hung out, to use the contemporary phrase, in a loosely structured way. They connected with each other. They never just sat. They never just watched. Anyone who’s ever read a Jane Austen novel knows that people were plenty occupied in the evening hours.
Compare that to what people do now, online: they write emails; they chat over instant messaging; they web surf; they play video games with people across the world; they play Guitar Hero and Rock Band – in other words, they do a lot of that same stuff people have always done, and less and less of sitting and watching every year. This is perhaps the most terrifying thing to wonder, if you’re in the entertainment business: what if people aren’t changing? What if they’re changing back?
May '10
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
I grew up as one of the only kids I ever met without a TV. My siblings and I raced to the library every week to grab armloads of books, and we read non-stop.
Our own kids grew up with most everything- TV, early computers when they were very young, better as the PC industry matured, VCRs, you name it.
I thought I was book-addicted now because I started with no TV, but the kids are about the same as I am- read all the time, books are important to them professionally as well.
I tend to think that this is less about distractions than parental examples. Read to them when they are little instead of plopping them down in front of a screen, let them see you read instead of passive entertainments, encourage the printed word, and they are more likely to go that way themselves.
Of course, I'm probably wrong, as usual, and some people just love to read for no reason we can discern.
May '10
Re: Of Books and Pants, Fancy and Otherwise
Duane Oyen:
I tend to think that this is less about distractions than parental examples. · Jul 27 at 2:57pm
I agree with you Duane. My parents worked 12-18 hour days at their business, but they still took time to read and encourage me to read. My grandmother who lived near us read and encouraged me to read.
My younger brother did not read much as a child, but that may have been more about being different than actual taste. He reads like crazy now......
I think parental influence is critical.