Read That Funky Novel, White Boy

There’s a quote that Lentz said in Galatea 2.2 that has recently had me pondering some more on the attitudes of reading in this day and age: “Marcel writes Books.” (41) It’s the tone here I’m emphasizing: very condescending.

This, in turn, had me rereading a (somewhat) recently published Onion article, entitled Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book.

What I find most interesting about this article is the satire used to convey the sense that reading is so much a thing of the past that it is now deemed “eccentric,” the way some may deem a Medieval troubadour strolling through modern-day Albany eccentric, etc. There is the sense that more technologically-advanced forms of entertainment, which lack a certain quality of content, are more gratifying (“spending hour after hour watching YouTube videos at night”), but the satire is also taken a step further in establishing such idle activity as “zoning out during a bus ride” or “staring at [the] bedroom wall” as more “normal” than reading. While hilarious, sadly I don’t believe this is too far from the truth for today’s youth. YouTube’s popularity does not simply stem from Literature classes posting clips once in a while on class blogs, but most likely from those aimlessly surfing the site, which is just as good as zoning out and staring at the wall. (Zoning out and staring at the wall might even be more beneficial, I think, since quietude is available and the act of pondering becomes simpler to do.) One of the trainers for our Literacy Volunteer tutor sessions last week (and Ryan will appreciate this) reminded us that reading is not a passive activity: we are constantly thinking about what we have just read as we are reading, we predict what events are going to happen next in the text, we constantly read and reread the same lines over and over again in order to acquire meaning. Trust me, you all know those times when you’re not paying attention to what you are reading and at the end of the paragraph or page have to ask yourself, “Where the @%!& was I? What the &@% am I doing?” In these cases, you might as well be staring at the bedroom wall, drooling puddles on your filthy periwinkle carpet.

On a similar note: Last spring, a friend of mine gave me Stephen Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good For You (which Kim has already cited before) as a joke, since I had deemed most content of modern pop-culture to be Beelzebub’s babe, the spawn of Satan, and so on and so forth. I did in fact happen to read it (stumbled through it since it was a little theoretically redundant) and Johnson at one point notes (and please mind my paraphrasing: the book is stowed away in one of my five boxes of books that my father whisked away upstate until I venture up there to reclaim them), “Well I could point out all of the negative aspects of book reading” (since his point is not to scorn reading but praise new cognitions in modern pop culture– though scorning is evident), arguing that reading secludes a person and makes one anti-social. True or false? True on a very superficial level, since the act of reading has diminished from the group activity it once was to a silent, singular action. False for a great number of other reasons. Take the Onion article, for example: “As bizarre as it may seem, Meyer isn’t alone. Once a month, he and several other Greenwood residents reportedly gather at night not only to read books all the way through, but also to discuss them at length.” Also, this class is a perfect example of social activity involving the act of reading. I am continually chided by my friends because I will sometimes bring a book to social events, especially if I know we’re only going to lounge around a friend’s apartment. I don’t see anything wrong with that. While it may be construed as anti-social, it’s really not: it gives me something interesting to talk to my peers about; the conversation usually starts, “What are you reading” and successfully launches up from there. (Plus, everybody needs a Dylan Thomas poem forced upon them once in a while. It’s necessary to our well-being.)

So pish for them, then.

Richard Powers: International Man of Mystery

(I’d like to note that Galatea 2.2 is still a “book in progress,” i.e. I haven’t finished it as of yet, so please do bear with me.)

One wouldn’t deem (meaning I wouldn’t deem) this novel a “page-turner” upon immediately picking it up in a dentist’s office and starting it, background Muzak and all. Frankly, I’d rather suffer root canal “like a patient etherized upon a table” than attempt to comprehend the technological “connectionism” specifics once again. Personally (“As opposed to who else’s perspective?” my old Expository Writing professor would quip) I didn’t understand much of the computerized “mumbo jumbo,” though I tried my best: pages and pages of meaningless phrases studied over and over again. Perhaps this is making it a longer read than intended. I’m not being ignorant here, I swear, I’m just attempting to take it all in at once! Maybe if I had more time, I’d get some of it right away. Don’t get me wrong, though, there are plenty of parts in the book that exhibit fluidity, particularly the parts concerning Richard and his nostalgic memories of “C.” I’m also enjoying the way that the originally-presented-as-entirely-stoic Lentz is evolving more as a human being and less as a reclusive “machine-type” himself, particularly in his growing attachment to Richard. [I must admit that his cries of "Marcel, sit down. Marcel!" (92) and "Don't leave, Marcel" (124) sound a little too pathetic and pleading for the Lentz we were originally introduced to.] Another thing I’m also enjoying: the pronouns of “C.” and “U.” and “B.” and etc.; they are very Kafkaesque in their simplicity and mysteriousness (Along the lines of “‘Like a dog,’ uttered K.” or something of the sort– only “K.” doesn’t appear at the beginning of every single sentence down the page), though they stand for subjects hardly simple and mysterious at all. This novel also piques my interest because of the various poetic references (e.g. Frost contemplating suicide as he takes a whizz in the woods).

A theory that I had touched upon in an earlier post (one that Kim helpfully elaborated for me) also appears in one passage:“‘Reading knowledge is the smell of the bookbinding paste. The crinkle of thick stock as the pages turn. Paper the color of aged ivory. Knowledge is temporal. It’s about time. You know how that goes, Engineer. Even you must remember that.’” (148)What Richard is explaining here taps into our previous discussions of physical connections with the “book,” as opposed to new technologies (i.e. the Internet) displacing this physical form. It’s not simply the objects that we love (I’d like to think that at least a Graduate English class has not reached that stage of materialism yet), but the sensations and experiences we associate with those objects that we adore. Parody a classic jingle: “The look, the feel of novels, the fabric of our lives.” It’s not a joke, though. We experience an unforgettable story, an eternally-quotable poem, an extremely convincing essay in this form and we remember these remarkable works through this medium, as we first experienced them. As a result, we learn to associate those experiences with certain sensations: We hold a book in our hand and we do smell that “bookbinding paste.” We listen attentively to the “crinkle” as we turn the pages. We stare longingly at the “aged ivory” color that the words are printed on. And we’re in love. At least, this English class is. Who knows? Today, a fifteen-year-old may see a homemade “Jackass” imitation video online of a man running naked past a blind man on a street corner and fall in love with YouTube immediately.

Speaking of YouTube: the agitated Richard and his first line ["Picture a train heading south." (36)] reminded me of a scene from the 1987 film, Throw Momma From The Train:

Fitzpatrick: Whore of Theory

While trudging my way through yet another piece of theory (think jogging through a waist-high acre of oatmeal in the dead of winter while wearing untied steel-toed construction boots), here are some brief thoughts on Fitzpatrick, specifically her thoughts on the “Death of the Novel” in regards to content:

There is an interesting viewpoint brought up in her first chapter that relates to not necessarily the “Death of the Novel” as an effect of, say, technological advancements in entertainment in this day and age (for example), but as an effect of essentially “low-quality” literature. She cites Louis Rubin with the idea that “the lull in production while the writers of the mid-twentieth century work[ed] out their issues of influence create[d] the space for such obituaries” (18), implying that novelists were so hooked on the novel as a revered artform that their self-confidence (or lack thereof) had (or eventually would) get the best of them and voila: a decline in production. While this may have been a possible conclusion for the mid-twentieth century, I’m not truly buying it today. Walk into your nearest A&P, wander past the Milk Duds and watermelon balls (tiny little pink eyes glaring at your every step) and you will gladly stumble upon the supermarket romance fiction you first came across while eyeing the desk of your sixth-grade Health instructor; titles like Death By Seduction and Cockney Cuckold with illustrated covers of bare-chested Fabios on unicorns and so on and so forth. Luckily, Fitzpatrick cites Alvin Kernan, who explains that in terms of the novel today, we live in a “society of surplus and overproduction.” (21) His idea is that the physical book is far from “dead,” but the reverence we have related to the artform passed on years ago. Essentially: most what we deem a “novel” today is horse manure. Fitzpatrick explains that it is “the difficulty of sorting the good from the bad, the worthwhile from the waste of time” (21) that Kernan defines as the difference between the “life” and “death” of the novel.

My concern here, however, is: isn’t this all subjective? What I might not claim to be a “worthwhile” read, others (such as the sixth-grade Health instructor) might deem the best damn thing to ever happen to them. (Sorry if anybody out here reads these books. Nothing personal.) This is why supermarket romance fiction is still constantly in mass production: somebody out there is reading it, somebody out there is keeping these sexually-driven and conflicted protagonists alive, somebody is paying Fabio’s salary when he’s not shooting I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter commercials. Is this to say that these books are “bad,” when everybody has different opinions on them? They’re not Dickens (a popular novelist in his day), but I have a feeling some fans of Desire On The Persian Rug are not begging for more Great Expectations every day, either. Naturally, today’s paperback romances are not the only forms of contemporary fiction; I’m just using them as examples. What about other novels of this day and age? We all have different opinions on Special Topics In Calamity Physics: if a mass audience isn’t buying it, does it mean the sun of literary quality has gone down on it forever? Question in point: is the novel as an artform dead or is the novel as an artform changing, like other mediums of culture? As an undergrad at Plattsburgh State, my Professor in a Music History class asked us why, after Beethoven, there were really no memorable (at least none that he informed us about) composers of the Classical Period: why the shift into the Romantic Period? Rhetorical question: “Because, stylistically, they went as far as they could go.” In terms of content, is that what we’re really fearing here: change? Have we gone as far as we can go with the novel? Are some of us desperate for an expansion of this traditional notion of the novel and hopelessly grasping onto it with every ounce of literary life we have left before it slips away?  

You tell me.

Who Are You Calling Special?

I apologize for not having completed the trek (though that may be an overstatement– maybe “hike on a small mountain or large hill padded with medium-sized, uneroded rocks”) through this book thus far: it has been a fairly busy week for me, and I’ll do my best to complete it by class tonight.

The format of Marisha (as if “Marissa” and “Marsha” copulated and birthed a love child) Pessl’s Special Topics In Calamity Physics intrigues me just the way a visit to the dentist’s office intrigues me: I’m there, reclined in an enlarged car seat, observing the actions of a masked, humming baritone above me as he inspects and prods my most efficient orifice, attempting to decipher the terminology he is using in his conversations with a masked, mute hygienist, only recognizing phrases and actions from previous visits. I wasn’t too sure about the initial premise of the literery-titled chapters through the Introduction, but as soon as I hit the first chapter (“Othello”), I understood the connections [e.g. Blue's mother became interested in Gareth because of his stories of world travel; she "fell for Dad's tales of flood and field" (18)] , and, oh, what a feeling– as if I had just recognized what a root canal entails exactly, all on my own. The only problem with this concept lies within chapters related to works I hadn’t read (e.g. de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses), and though I could figure out hints from the titles, the same connection just wasn’t acquired. As far as the citations and references throughout the text are concerned, I felt the same way: with lines such as “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty– that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’”, I was able to blurt out “KEATS!” and feel that connection, but in most other places I felt like I had to look up Blue’s references in order to truly get it– like reading The Wasteland all over again, only this time Eliot (or Pound with his totalitarian editing style, for that matter) doesn’t provide explanations of citations for the reader. (Or listener: imagine Eliot reading The Wasteland out loud along with his imposing footnotes? Has anyone ever sat through this extensive a reading?)

As for the content of the story, I am highly interested in these characters and their mysterious lifestyles: the more I find out about them, the more I want to know about them. I am curious to see if at the end of the novel I will be left dissatisfied, wanting to know more. Gareth van Meer is by far my favorite character of this book so far, perhaps because he (at least up until this point) seems to represent this traditional literary culture we are all dearly trying to preserve: “Forget about [a professor's] molding the minds, the future of a nation– a dubious assertion; there’s little you can do when they tend to emerge from the womb predestined for Grand Theft Auto Vice City.” (11)

On a side note, Pessl’s photograph on the inside back cover is haunting in a way, as if she was attempting to seduce the camera then suddenly had a vision of a toddler plummeting from a window seven stories high. It makes me want to stare into her eyes and glue the last page over her face at the same time.

Peek On No Keep…

There was one more aspect of Hayles in relation to The Keep that I completely forgot to bring up amidst all of the Fergilicious conversation. There’s a point in the analysis of Henry James’ “In the Cage” where Hayles describes the protagonist of that story as having (loose) “possession” (yes, familiar term here) of certain information: that is, she has access to particular information that just may significantly alter the course of her pathetic, caged in “reality” and her “imagined” reality just may come true. Because she has access to information that others do not, she exists within a “Regime of Scarcity.” (Or she does not fit within a utopian “Economy of Information.” Whichever you prefer.)

Class: Why are you still talking about this, Eric?
Eric: Because it pertains to The Keep, Class. A little bit.
Class: But it’s still Hayles, man. Get over it. We’re through with her.
Eric: (Starts to weep.) NEVER…
(Class points at Eric and laughs mockingly. There is a long, uncomfortable pause.)
Kim: (Awaking.) So… who’s next week?

Take a look at this passage: 

“And then it came back: the whole reason he’d fallen out of the window in the first place. Danny hadn’t exactly forgotten it, but he’d been thinking backward, crooked, maybe because of the drugs. The whole time he’d had a fact inside his head that would blow a hole straight through the middle of Howard’s life. And having that fact put Danny in charge.” (Egan, 138-9)

Danny has access to certain information that others do not: the affair between Mick and Ann. According to Hayles, then, because of this, Danny is moving towards a “Regime of Scarcity” in a sense, mostly since he chooses not to share this information with anyone else for the remainder of his story, save Mick who clearly already has access to it. And here I thought that Danny was all about the Economy of Information: being connected with as many people in the outside world as possible, sharing information through a widely accessed network. But circumstances started to change after Danny reached the castle, right? He started to lose grip of the Economy of Information, ironically represented through the loss of physical “possession” of his cell phone, satellite, etc. What’s interesting is that in this scenario he appears to desperately want only access to the information (eavesdropping), and not only ends up with a concussion, but loose possession (since it is not accessible to most others) of information that he does not want to be “in charge” of. What’s even more interesting is when Danny hurls his cell phone into who-knows-what off of the castle, it is entirely his choice. (As was mentioned yesterday:) Danny is changing, though Hayles would probably call it a reversal of contemporary puberty, heading back into the Regime of Scarcity or something-of-the-sort. Who knows.

And yes, when asked “Whatcya gonna do with all that junk,” Danny King simply responded by throwing it off of a castle.

“Keep” On Rockin’ In The Free World!

[Note: On Thursday, I went searching through my box of pre-ordered books that I had purchased from the college bookstore a few weeks ago, only to discover Jennifer Egan's The Keep missing. I guess I ordered my books online a little early, before The Keep was added to the syllabus, and thus not added to my purchase. Since I only commute to Albany Monday through Wednesday, I hadn't the chance to "hit up" (to use contemporary vernacular) the campus bookstore before Monday evening, so I frantically searched around locally for the text and finally came upon it late Sunday afternoon in a local bookstore. And the point of all of this: my pagination may be different from yours, since I may have a different edition, so please bear with me.]

The theme of Egan’s The Keep that I interpreted to be most relevant to our class, of course, was that of (surprise, surprise) NETWORK, particularly in regards to modern technological mediums. Danny, from the very beginning of the story, is a character deeply (and I mean deeply) in touch with his communicative network, evident from his almost spiritual attachments to his cell phone and (awkward) satellite that he drags halfway across the globe, even if there’s truly only one person (Martha) at the other end of this network. Danny is consumed by this network, as can be first noted by his initial obsessive preoccupations with setting up his satellite, when “the need to be back in touch [gets] uncomfortable, distracting, like a headache or a sore toe or some other low-grade physical thing that after a while starts to blot out everything else.” (38) Howard, on the other hand, becomes Danny’s theoretical nemesis in this respect, whose desires lie in the imaginative world, void of all modern technological conveniences promoting mass communication; his theory promotes time alone with one’s own imagination. When Howard tells Danny about his dream of the castle as a hotel with vast imaginative possibilities for visitors, Danny does nothing else but deem him as “nuts” (50), and here is where Danny’s paranoia and conspiracies regarding his cousin truly begin, not just after he falls head first out of the Keep. Danny views a world without these communications and technologies as an “invisible” lifestyle, and, according to Danny, “the thought of disappearing like that [is] worse than dying.” (47)

Going back to ideas about possession (Hayles strikes again), Howard here is promoting a sense of “possessive individualism,” where, as creatures isolated with our own minds only, we are in complete control of ourselves; we essentially “own” ourselves. (Hayles, 63) Danny here suffers from a strong physical possessiveness of his communication: he needs to have his cell phone in his hands, within his reach, and searches frantically for it in his coat pocket, even when he knows it is not there. What’s more interesting is Howard exhibits the very physical possessiveness that he abhors: the walkie-talkie. With the walkie-talkie, he is in control of the only communicative technological system in the castle; a bit hypocritical, don’t ya think?

However, if one perspective of the story is a battle between these technologies and the imagination, Howard’s dream appears to prosper in the end. True, a partnership of both worlds is discussed, but the mere prospect of that partnership of the mind and the machine is figuratively destroyed when Mick shoots Danny and he “[falls] back into the black pool” and it “fold[s] up around him;” (220) a metaphor of defeat equivalent to the satellite drowning in the exact same pool in an earlier chapter. This, of course, also occurs after Danny, completely paranoid, officially loses contact with Martha, his “keep,” for the last time, an action of his own wrongdoing. (175) I write that Howard’s dream for the castle only appears to solely prosper in the end for this reason: how did Holly find “Ray’s castle” (244) to begin with? THROUGH GOOGLE! Sorry, Howard: the mind and the machine can coexist.

I truly did enjoy this book. A read worth suggesting to persons of all ages! And for the blind: put it on tape! Or braille! You get the picture. One comment I will make, though: after Tom-Tom stabbed Ray, I strongly reconsidered past critiques (or lack thereof) made in previous creative writing workshops. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Your Mother Was a WHAT?

While I still believe that condensing N. Katherine Hayles’ “The Dream of Information” (the third chapter in My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts) into a “concise and comprehensive” (as stated by Kim) blog post is about as simple as decapitating live swine with a toothpick, here goes nothing:

One day the “Regime of Scarcity” (62) is strolling through the park. He functions on a conservative law wherein energy lost is equivalent to matter lost; that is, when he throws a penny into the fountain, neither he nor anybody else will be able to throw that exact penny into the fountain again, thus both the coin and the opportunity to throw the coin into the fountain are gone forever. Accompanying him in the park is the “Dream of Information” (63), who, unlike her acquaintance, functions on a law of costless sharing; that is, she may counterfeit the exact same penny and throw its currencied clones into many water fountains and still retain the original penny, thus she has shared the coin without losing the coin or the possibility to share the coin again.

Metaphors aside for a moment, the latter character is a key component to what Hayles titles the “Economy of Information” (63), where possession has no reason to exist: when information is widely shared and seems infinite, there’s no need to hoard any of it. She states that in a world run by the Economy of Information, there would be no need for “social position” or “economic class,” (63) since these resources would be available to everybody: surely an ultimate Equal Rights Movement. She also applies this to a loss of possession of the self, when all human beings are interconnected not as individuals, but as a combined, identity-less information system: sort of a Nirvana-like state for the masses. In this world, the personified “Dream of Information” is not a single being throwing a penny into the fountain, but all beings in one, sharing coins endlessly.

Remember this, however: the Regime of Scarcity and the Economy of Information coexist peacefully (somewhat) by the water fountain in the middle of the park. How? According to Hayles, there are three specific “feedback cycles” (64) connecting the two (communication between human bodies and technological mediums, changes of perspective in a pendulum-like motion between both, and a shift from printed language to typed code), which are emphasized in the remainder of the chapter through three fiction pieces spanning the last century. Let’s sum up some lessons learned briefly:

Henry James’ “In the Cage.” The imagination is a perfect escape from reality and will most likely become a desired reality eventually. Changes in code may be more significant than the meaning of content.

Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. The “self” need not be constrained within the body, if there is a “self” at all. Always question what reality truly is.

James Triptree’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In.” Never associate identity only with the body. Always be in control of the machine before the machine controls you.

While I realize it is not a text, the work that kept reeling through my mind as I was reading this chapter was the movie Being John Malkovich (particularly the section of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch when the concept of subjectivity from the doll is introduced), where John Cusack plays a puppeteer who discovers a porthole to John Malkovich’s mind. There is an incredible amount of speculation of the “self” throughout this movie: if you enter another person’s medium, are you yourself, are you that person, are you some combination of the two? Here is the scene that occurs after John Malkovich has physically entered the porthole to his own mind and his sense of self is heightened.

Is this to say that when the physical self meets the mental self, the surrounding “reality” becomes the complete self only? Does this support the belief that the physical self and mental self aren’t one and the same? Or does it imply that that our current “reality” is only an illusion and the only thing that’s “real” in the world is only the self? If you haven’t seen it, rent the movie. You’ll enjoy it, trust me.

There are an abundant number of points that Hayles is hitting in this chapter (which is why this post may seem a little chaotic: think of Jell-O thrown into a ceiling fan) in regards to “The Economy of Information.” However, keep this one in mind: THE “DREAM OF INFORMATION” OPENS THE DOOR TO A WORLD OF COMMUNICATION AND SHARING VOID OF POSSESSIVE RESTRICTIONS AND COSTS. I believe this concept helps contemporary literature significantly: it offers an endless amount of publication possibilities for current writers, allowing for them to spread their works to an untold number of masses with less of a possibility of an “Out-of-Print” notice. This is the main reason I endorse online literary journals. Haven’t seen any yet? Try Holy Cuspidor. Joe will appreciate it.

And here: Have a review of My Mother Was A Computer by Neil Easterbrook. (Science Fiction Studies, 2006) See how revered N. Katherine Hayles is in the field of science fiction!

Hope this was at least a little bit helpful. This imbecile posing as a Master’s student appreciates you taking the time to read this post. See you all on Tuesday!

Response!

Kim replied to my last post with:

This is an interesting argument, Eric, because if the only thing that separates the book from other media is its materiality, then we leave all of its content out in the cold. What we love about any given book is that it feels good and reminds us of something? Doesn’t that mean that it could be covers over blank pages? Your later point is more compelling to me: that there is a unique combination of the physical and the imaginary world that the book satisfies. Arguably, however, new technologies are all about making digital worlds tactile—look at the success of the Wii, wherein you can physically engage with a digital environment. So is there an additional engagement with the book that we can add to your formula here?

 ————————————————–

Since WordPress does not allow replies to individul comments, here’s my post to reply to Kim’s comment on my previous thoughts:

Ah, yes, this is indeed true, Kim. I should have pointed out that the physical nature of a book is one of the more beneficial qualities that separates it from a great deal of media, though not necessarily all of it. The Wii is an interactive entertainment system that also emphasizes physical movement, but we must remember that it’s only simulation. Indeed, the Wii is much more physically engaging than your average Nintendo or Sega (or insert brand here) gaming system. However, playing tennis (for example) on a Wii is not nearly as physically engaging as playing an actual game of tennis on the court, and, for a tennis player, is most likely not nearly as thrilling. I believe the same goes for reading: to read a text online does not evoke the same experience as reading a concrete text in your hands. A longtime book reader has certain memories associated with this type of entertainment, and is probably hesitant to dispose of them and welcome new mediums with open arms.

As far as content is concerned, generally books are regarded as more credible literature than what can be found through other mediums where more material (decent or not) is likely to be published. However, this is all subjective: the quality of “decent literature” is not the same in everyone’s “book” (okay, enough puns); as the old adage goes: what one man sees as gold, another man may see as garbage. I think the feelings we associate with books are special only to those who have been book readers for a great amount of time and have particular stories and emotions associated with these books; it is these people (ahem, English majors included) who are not looking forward to these new forms of technology invading their lives and trying to take over these memories. I don’t think in this case content is as important as what we associate the content with. There are very special experiences that we have with books, but there may also be new experiences with newer technologies. A person may read an author who exclusively publishes online and fall in love with the content, thereby falling in love with the medium, since he/she has no other choice. If we read a Shakespearean tragedy, the emotions we experience as a result are entirely different than when seeing it performed. We can’t say that one form is “better” than another, but we can (and often do) prefer one to another because it’s what we’re accustomed to and what we have fallen in love with already.

And I believe that this trend of refusing change will continue for generations to come. We, who were raised on books, will defend them to the end. Who knows? A person who has fallen in love with the internet may, a thousand years from now, defend this medium with the same kind of diligence that we defend the book with.

I hope this makes a better argument…

“T-t-t-t-t-t-t-touch me…”

The question brought up on Tuesday night that struck me with a certain amount of significance: “What does the book have to offer that other media doesn’t?” After pondering what we had discussed this past class, my answer draws back to what we’ve been discussing since day one: the physical nature of it. Naturally, as we’ve touched upon, a book is a real, concrete object that we can hold in our hands, embrace like a newfound lover or caress like a two-month-old Labrador Retriever puppy when we are absolutely attached to it, or even deject it, toss it to the ground or hurl it against the wall or at an unsuspecting grandmother when it aggravates us. Sometimes even the mere sight of it in a corner of the bedroom resembles the feelings a fatigued forty-something mother receives when she has accidentally locked her three-year-old son in the car with the windows up on a scorching July afternoon, then suddenly finds her keys: it’s a relief, it’s a comfort zone, it’s relaxation after a long day in the gallows. It’s a goddamned love affair, and the same goes for other types of entertainment; loneliness may be accompanied by any number of mediums, if human interconnection isn’t a simple option: all of those times you fall asleep with the television on? Alone. All of those times you sing along to Gordon Lightfoot (or what you will) out loud inside of your hatchback? Alone. All of those times you sit back, I mean truly sit back, and relax with a novel? Alone. And if we aren’t alone, we zone everything else around us out. As single human beings, we turn to inanimate forms of entertainment when we cannot find other human beings to entertain our senses. The difference with the book is you can touch it, you can feel it, you can actually have some sort of physical connection with it. Think about an elderly couple, married for two or three generations. The ones who are miserable, the ones who cannot wait to wither away into the Earth don’t touch each other anymore. At all. In fact, they most likely go out of their way not to. The ones who are ecstatic about the short span of life they have left, however, are ancient examples of PDA and very well might need to get a room. This may not be true for all, but you catch my drift: the connection a human has with a book is very sensual in a way. What’s even more interesting is we are in love with a physical interaction that takes us into a non-material world: our imaginations. In this sense, the book satisfies both our physical and mental worlds simultaneously; a satisfaction that the television or the internet or other mediums are unable to accomplish.

“Array Pott-air!”

Fan-fiction is a fairly new concept to me; I actually had no idea that this cult-genre had ever existed until last year when I realized I had mistakenly signed up for a group on Livejournal showcasing fan-fiction of They Might Be Giants. (And yes, oddly enough, people are creating their own character backgrounds and plotlines simply based on songs of a somewhat obscure band. Interesting.) I’ve personally never read any sort of fan-fiction, especially not any in relation to Harry Potter (since I have yet to read these seven popular compositions), but from what I’ve learned about it, I oppose none of it. In fact, chapter five of Jenkins’ Convergence Culture even furthered my knowledge and support of this genre, particularly the Harry Potter ones. They not only provide children with a chance to create in a world where most entertainments thrive on mere consumption (even reading), but they also allow for socialization, which includes establishing a great deal of new friendships and collaborating with these new peers in ways that call for the sharing of original thoughts and ideas. I do believe that children, especially those who would like to explore more in the field of creative writing, should eventually start to create characters in worlds of their own (or at least experiment with it once in a while), but fan-fiction most definitely appears to be a healthy creative outlet.

Naturally, there are those who disagree, as Jenkins points out, and the befuddlement begins. Apparently, Warner Brothers was not too kosher with these fan-fiction communities on the basis of copyright infringement, and, as expected, the cease-and-desist letters were sent across the globe like letters promoting lice control in elementary schools. Now, I could understand the rampant ceasing and desisting if Warner Brothers was facing financial losses, but, as one supporter of Warner Brothers, “Electronic Frontier Foundation chairman of the board Brad Templeton, writes, ‘Almost all fan fiction is arguably a copyright violation. If you want to write a story about Jim Kirk and Mr. Spock, you need Paramount’s permission, pure and simple.’” (188) This is what confuses me: if somebody simply writes a story based on an already published work and only posts it online and does not receive any revenue from it, how does this seriously affect the production company who has bought the rights for the movie version of the original author’s work? Shouldn’t the original author (or her publishing agency) be the one to take legal action in this case, if any legal action needs to be taken at all for fan-fiction? Maybe my befuddlement here is silly, but I’m still perplexed by the belief that prepubescent Harry Potter online fan-fiction writers are severely injuring large-budget Hollywood production companies.

What also confused me was the mention of a book burning by the Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, NM, where thirty Harry Potter books were burned, as well as DVDs of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. (192) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Is there something I’m missing here? I realize that I haven’t since the movie since I was six years old, but what’s so Satanic about this Disney Classic (besides the fact that it’s a Disney Classic)? Doesn’t “good” overcome “evil?” Isn’t the woman with the “poisonous apple” vilified to the end? Isn’t Snow White redeemed as a “good guy,” even after she bites into the apple and is saved by Prince Whatever-The-Hell-His-Name-Is-This-Time? I was hoping for the “seven dwarfs representing seven deadly sins” route, but I’m afraid it doesn’t quite check out. I might also be forgetting something in the storyline, so please feel free to cyber-smack me if I am.

…and finally, this post’s accompanying Onion article, this time just a shortened brief: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31389