By 1950, a quarter of a million were published every year, while today a book is published somewhere in the world every 20 seconds (that’s 1,576,800 per annum, in case you were wondering)...Google’s servers process a petabyte (one quadrillion bytes) of data every hour. Fifty petabytes is roughly equal to the entire written works of humankind up until now.
---Will Self.
Of course, others have made these points before: George Steiner on verbal hyperinflation, Ivan Illich on the disappearance of the commons of silence, the proliferation of images, Jonathan Franzen in his wonderful Harper's essay on 'linear' reading vs skimming, surfing. Think of it, all those stacks of journal articles, newspaper opinion pieces, blogland, youtube, the universities churning out research, the superhighways, bandwiths clogged up with data. Speed is of the essence.
Well, not really an avid book reader (unlike C, D, anton, and Roxana) but still think the case for reading fiction has to be made. "what's the point," old Mugs once said, "why not just go to the facts?"
an interlude:
Martha Nussbaum:
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3 comments:
Just caught up with July 9th Interlude, b. Am now re-playing the copy you once sent me of a compilation of Emmi's recordings. Still think her Bach renditons are her at her most moving, but then, listening to her Orpheus and Euridice.....
Re books and their proliferation: maybe everyone is trying to emulate Montaigne, who invented the 'stream of consciousness' style of writing (although it fell to William James to actually coin the phrase), in this sense: Virginia Wolfe said that Montaigne's priniciple was ‘ To observe, observe perpetually’. I mean, we are all tempted into that impossible ambition: to stem the flow of time, its inexorability, whether in fact or fiction, as if by observing, describing, fixing, the moment, we can immortalise it and, by extension, ourselves?
(Vide Proust - the arch wannabe captor.)
Just a thought.
Now Emmi is on to Tristan and Isolde - too much, and not enough….
Dear Celia, hello!
:-)
Yes, think you're absolutely right. I've just started a book on Montaigne ('How to live'..awful title and a bit too chatty for my liking but still...)
Stemming time or diverting one's attention from it yes, that's what it all seems to be about (writing, art, architecture, entertainment). But then again, there's the importance of letting go, of moving on (the most difficult thing)..of allowing 'wonder to be released into life' (Franz Rosenzweig).
Bad news: Rasheel couldn't get a visa! Can you beat that?! so, don't know if I'll be coming over after all.
anyways...
hope all is well, c.
best wishes,
b.
How extraordinary! That's exactly the book I've just started, hence dragging Montaigne into the arena. Actually, I rather like Sarah Bakewell's style and its certainly a fascinating story. But have you ever read the man himself? I haven't but mean to do so.
Why on earth is Rasheel banned from UK when her parents can come? Don't understand it at all.
Yes, all O.K. Going down to Brighton on Friday, to bring her back here for a week. Following week-end, take her back, via the Sunday Prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
Ciao
C
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