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Since starting Lit Drift, I’ve gotten used to reading a lot of doom-and-gloom opinion pieces about the death of the publishing industry. I’ve read predictions that the paperbound book will be totally replaced by digital books within the decade, or that we’ll all stop buying books and forget how to read, and so on. Most of it I’ve taken with a grain brick of salt, because I think at this point in our current techno-literary revolution it is far too early to tell where we’ll be in five–let alone ten–years.
Still, I can’t shake my anxiety after reading this recent article from The Guardian, in which Philip Roth–one of my favorite writers–says that the novel will be a “cult minority” in 25 years. He attributes the decline of the novel to the popularity of film, TV, and computers. It’s not the first time I’ve heard claims like this. But it’s unnerving to hear it from Roth.
He continues:
“The book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete [in the] beginning with the movie screen. It couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen,” Roth said. “Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn’t measure up.”
Maybe I’ve been living in a happy non-reality for the last two decades, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. So as much as I love Philip Roth, I have to respectfully disagree.
I have a feeling literature is going to be just fine in the digital age. Here is my reasoning:
#1
The media predicted the death of the book upon the advent of radio, and then again with film, and then again with television. It’s happening once more with the rise of the computer and the Internet. It’s possible that this time things are different. Anything’s possible. But based solely on literature’s perseverance throughout the last century, I’m optimistic about its survival.
#2
The media has predicted that the Internet would turn us into a bunch of drooling, snarky drones who couldn’t care less about grammar or spelling. But as we’ve said before, people are–on the contrary–becoming increasingly literate thanks to the Internet.
#3
Roth says that people can’t concentrate long enough to finish an entire novel, but I don’t think that’s an issue. If you can spend ten hours on Facebook, you can spend two hours reading a book. If you can spend ten hours reading your favorite blogs, you most definitely have the attention span required to spend two hours reading a book.
#4
What with innovative techno-literary projects like Neil Gaiman’s crowdsourced Twitter story or Colson Whitehead’s multi-part Internet novel, I think the Internet is proving to be an asset to fiction rather than a hindrance. It’s bringing literature back to the masses. I can’t think of any other time in history when fiction has been so dynamic and interesting than right now.
#5
Although Roth says that the Kindle doesn’t make a difference in people’s reading habits, I think it does. Despite my own qualms about losing the experience of reading a paperbound book, the Kindle and other digital readers do satisfy our need for instant gratification. We are a lazy species, and maybe without digital readers many people couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to get a book from the bookstore or the library. But thanks to digital readers we can browse, buy, and read new books all in the span of just a few clicks.
So is the novel really a dying medium? Good God, I hope not. I have yet to publish my first novel, and when it finally comes out I want people to, you know, read it. Things are just changing so fast right now that I think it’s difficult to make any well-informed predictions about where we’ll be in the near future. I think the best thing we can do right now is to sit back, watch what happens, and keep reading.
Feel free to add your own reasons why the novel isn’t dying (or if you’re on Roth’s team, why the novel is doomed) in the comments.
Wonderful post (recommended on twitter by the lovely @cafenirvana). as a writer I see all things digital as potential tols for helping me tell stories in new ways, experimenting, and, most importantly, getting my work out there and noticed. I can only agree with you and nay-say the nay-sayers: the internet is increasing the amount of time people spend with the written word, and in particular with the stories those words convey. And that can only be a good thing.
I agree! And I hope you’re right. I think reading and publishing will change,but not go away.
Like you say we can’t know for sure, but as a novelist who’s just brought out his first novel, I do feel gloomy about the future of the novel.
I think there is less encouragement from schools to get boys particularly to read as part of the general dumbing down trend in British education. A trend that is culture wide, as people do demonstrate shorter attention spans and poorer focus with the other distractions on offer. Spending 8 hours online is not the same as spending 8 hours absorbed in a book. You’ll probably have Itunes on, be reading and sending emails each time they ping, check out a YouTube vid someone recommends yo – all while supposedly reading online? This is not multi-tasking as such, it is skim reading.
But my biggest fear is reserved for the publishing industry itself. 9 years into the new millenium, where is the 21st century novel that breaks with what has gone before? Someone else said it today on a blog (apologies for not namechecking them here), but what really is the value of a 19th Century art form, which got a makeover last century, but otherwise remains the same 200 year old medium? Potentially there is so much that can be done with the written word, both with new technologies, but even within traditional print, but people seem content to rehash the same old stuff, exacerbated by the diminishing hand of marketing departments who pigeonhole everything into genres. Code-breaking thrillers, Vampires and chicklit – if this is all we have to offer with the written word, then it will shrivel up and die, in comparison with the new media online.
I agree with you about re: Facebook–that it requires less concentration than a book does, and that’s why I added the second bit about reading blogs. But still I think FB is better than than TV or film in a way, because skim-reading is still reading, so it’s easier to make the leap to reading books. If not novels, then maybe short stories to start.
That’s a really interesting point in your last paragraph–”what really is the value of a 19th Century art form, which got a makeover last century, but otherwise remains the same 200 year old medium?” I don’t know the answer to that. I guess you could say the 21st century “makeover” novel are diginovels or technological lit projects, but these are more supplements than actual replacements for the printed word. But I think there’s still room for creativity and innovation in literature–since ideas are a dime a dozen and the Internet makes it so easy to distribute those ideas, you really have to force yourself to come up with something incredibly compelling in order to be noticed. We might not have had the breakout novel of the 21st century yet, but then again, James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which you could call the breakout novel of the 20th century, didn’t come out until 1922. So I think (I hope) we’ve still got some time.
As an internet junkie and someone who’s completely absorbed by all things digital, I kind of get where Mr. Roth’s coming from. However, as someone who’s library card is constantly warm to the touch, and who has a pile of novels queued up and ready at all times, it’s hard to agree with him. I love the Web, I love my computer (and TV and movies, too) but more than all of them I love to read. Unless I’m unique (hint: I’m not) then that’s good news.
Also, I’ve been eyeing the Kindle/Nook/soon-to-be Apple readers with interest. If we transition to e-reading, novels are just one more screen!
Oh, this is so refreshing. I read Roth’s article last week and found it quite disheartening to see such a well-known author lamenting the fall of the book.
If publishers keep raising such a fuss about e-books (like not allowing lending on the Nook), I think e-books will pose much less of a threat to print books. Besides, I think that there are too many people who are a) stubborn b) hate reading on screens (of any sort, even the fancy sort on a Kindle) and c) just love the look, feel and smell of a book too much for it to completely fade away in such a sort time.
All the great ones are saying it. I saw an interview with Norman Mailer before his death where he was far more harsh than Roth. And now Roth!
Well, a point I think the author of this article might have missed, and a fallacy in the argument of these old-timers, is that the novel isn’t competing with new media. As the writer points out with the advent of radio the novel didn’t die, why? Because the do not compete directly. Maybe they compete for people’s time, but it’s not real market competition when taking a duece factors in.
The truth is that more people are reading today than ever before. There are also three thousand Dan Browns to every Philip Roth. I think the problem for literary writers today, is to educate a new readership in to appreciating art. Just as there are hacks writing novels, there are hacks everywhere else: on the screen, radio, and tv. The real battle for the novelist today is the battle to define art, and to make it important once again–as is the challenge of every generation.
[...] Maybe the novel isn’t dying. [...]
I feel like doom-and-gloom is a generational thing. The young writers (most between 22-35) in my MFA program are overwhelmingly positive about the future of reading and literature, while the baby-boomer faculty are overwhelmingly gloomy. Maybe it’s because they came of age during that decade or two when literary fiction was unusually popular, or maybe it’s something else. It’s easy to forget that novel-readers have been a minority for almost all of the novels’ history, and that skimmable popular literature– whether pulps, broadsides, street ballads or collaborative online snarkage– has made up a huge part of what people read since basically forever. It’s a losing proposition to expect everyone who reads to be reading on the cutting edge. For anyone who’s paying attention, we are living in a wonderful time for fiction (one I will probably look back on with my own curmudgeonly nostalgia when I’m 75). The people who *aren’t* paying attention aren’t hurting anyone. They’re just doing what most people have done for most of history.
[...] a lot of my socio-cultural itches, stare skeptically at Kindle for the same reasons I do, and they’ve got the novel’s back even if, like always, it’s supposed to be [...]
Reasons 3 and 4 don’t hold up to scrutiny. Sorry.
I really want to believe you, but your logic is hella faulty.
Novels require deep levels of concentration, without distractions. All facebook is is distractions.
I have never read more than a few lines of a fiction story on the internet anywhere. Because some messages me, or I get an email, or whatever. A crowdsourced twitter novel isn’t even close to being art, it’s more like playing Madlibs with a bunch of strangers.
TRY AGAIN.
[...] Drift doesn’t buy into all that “death of the novel” [...]
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes!!!
I will say, about attention span comment, that I was most productive yesterday because I didn’t have internet access. I wrote for like 4 hours straight. Usually I’ll interrupt with some facebook checking or email checking. So we all still have the capacity for uninterrupted interest in books, we just need to force ourselves to minimize the distractions.
Personally, I don’t believe in “the death of the novel,” since this prediction has been made since the birth of the novel. The novel will continue to evolve as a form of literature, and as an art form.
Technology is always a factor in change. However, I don’t think even the combined power of the Internet (which I am loath to capitalize), television, e-readers, smart phones, and whatever earth-shattering new gadgetry will be choking our superstores and landfills in the next several decades, have the power of the novel.
It’s refreshing to see writers and the rest of the publishing industry embracing the convergence of fiction and technology, and I applaud the efforts of those who manage to get people to read books through innovation. However, we must always remember that technology serves us–we do not serve it.
As long as there are people to read them, there will be books.
The novel will never die, and I for one refuse to stop writing them.
[...] November 2009 by nelsonleith Ok, so maybe “wrath” is a strong word to describe JK Evanczuk’s five-point refutation of Roth’s assertion that the novel would end up a cult item within a quarter century, but I was glad to see someone [...]
One other thing to point out is how technology is changing even the printed medium of books for the better. With print-on-demand technology, it’s cheaper to create a book now than ever, now that the publisher doesn’t have to worry about monumental overhead and unsold novels in mountains gathering dust in some warehouse somewhere, losing the publishing company profit every day they sit unsold.
I love technology. It means a publisher may be more likely to take a chance on me now. It’s CHEAPER now. Less of a risk! Yay technology! Bring it on, baby!
http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm