Discussion of Part III of The Gutenberg Elegies

On April 22, the class discussed a number of issues raised by Sven Birkerts in Part III of The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age and during his participation in the Electronic Studies in the Late Age of Print (ESLAP) colloquium conducted at OSU April 18-20. In preparation for that discussion, I asked class members via e-mail to respond to a series of questions about their reading habits and to compare their feelings about the purpose and meaning of reading with those expressed by Birkerts in The Gutenberg Elegies. My questions and edited versions of the responses are included in this page.

During class, I distributed an excerpt from Chapter 6 (Technology and Literature: Book Culture and Television Culture) of The Death of Literature by Alvin Kernan. Kernan's book is cited several times in The Gutenberg Elegies. The excerpt (equivalent to about one and a quarter single-spaced, typed pages) was distributed in the following forms: photocopy, library book, computer printout, e-mail message on a computer screen and handwritten copy. One participant was asked to read the photocopied text aloud while two were asked to listen and take notes; and one was asked to handwrite the text of the photocopy as he read silently to himself . Participants who received the handwritten copy, the computer printout, the e-mail and the book were asked to read silently. All participants were told to try to remember as much of the material as possible using whatever method they found effective (handwritten notes, memory tricks etc.). They also were asked to spend about five minutes free writing about the way they processed the information in the Kernan excerpt. The only student who knew who had written the excerpt was Paula, who had been given a copy of the Kernan book. The class was given about fifteen minutes to "read" and respond.

The medium in which the excerpt was delivered seemed to have a strong effect on the participants. Andrea, who had been given the e-mail message, tried to print out a hard copy of the text to read, in an effort to make an end-run around the medium. Jeff, who had been asked to write as he read, began reading without writing. Paul immediately questioned the source of his handwritten text, guessing at first that it was a student paper. Paula noted that she would have preferred to make marginal notes in the book, but could not because it was a library book. Shobana, who read the computer printout, underlined portions of text, made marginal and end notes on the pages. She also noted the use of handwritten copyediting. Jeff did not have enough time to finish rewriting his text. Vicki, who read the text aloud, noted that she concentrated on the process of reading and speaking and found it difficult to absorb the information. Maureen and Lewis, who listened to Vicki, took notes while she read, but were constrained by not being able to see how the text was presented and were unable to refer back to portions that had already been read aloud. Susan and the others who read silently were distracted by overhearing the text being read aloud. Paula first asked if she could go out into the hall to read and then began to make soft noises in her throat to block out Vicki's voice. Shobana covered her ears. Reading may not be an activity that fits easily into "multi-tasking."

Although the experiment was very brief and unscientific, it seems clear that while the medium may not be the message, in this case it affected both the perception of the message and the recipients' ability to process and retain the information. The readers also wished to maintain control over the medium and the environment in which they read.

Initiation of e-mail discussion

Tuesday, we'll be experimenting with forms of reading and writing. In preparation for that, let's discuss how you perceive the purpose and meaning of reading and writing (specifically in terms of "literature"); how those perceptions may change with the medium; and how your views are similar to and different from those of Birkerts.

In his lecture on Saturday and in Part III, Birkerts emphasized the importance of deep reading, introspection and a sort of uninterrupted"communion" with literature. His description of literature verges on the mystical. He points out that "...even those who practice and preach the stuff cannot agree on what it is" (187), but that this does not diminish its importance. Even experts would have "an equally hard time settling on a meaning for `love` or `God`--yet surely these terms are not without their existential potency" (187). He writes that traditionally fiction has been a way to help people understand the world (204) and that the novel has aided the search for meaning (208). In his lecture, he extolled deep reading, comparing it to the underwater view of a tidal pool. The objects in the tidal pool cannot retain their numinous qualities when lifted into the air, he said. He compared language to water, saying that in order to possess the truth of language, we need to go underwater and become immersed in our reading. He also seems to be making a distinction between reading for the accrual of facts, reading for dissection and analysis (lit. crit.) and reading to obtain deep truth in a personal search for meaning (akin to the purposes served by religion or therapy). Do you make such distinctions? Do you read differently depending on your purpose? Is there any value in drawing these distinctions? Do different presentations of text affect your ability to obtain what you want from a book or hyper fiction?

Yet, Birkerts also writes that the "deeper truth of things can no longer be expressed in sequential realistic narrative" and praises writers such as Auster, DeLillo, Pynchon and Gaddis, who have rejected realism and are writing difficult books that are not widely read because of their daunting form (207). Is this so different from hypertext? Can we ever become "immersed" in the print fiction of Robbe-Grillet, which insists on surface and rejects depth? In what ways are Post Modern print fiction and hyper fiction different? Is the medium really the message or has our Post Modern philosophy made traditional fiction obsolete? How would you read Jane Austin differently on a computer screen? Could Pride and Prejudice be rewritten as hypertext? How would that affect your method of reading and your understanding of the novel and its "meaning."

Birkerts contends that the interactive aspects of CDs (and by extension hyper fiction) interrupt the concentration necessary for deep reading (201) and blames the glut of information and fast pace of the electronic age for a profound cognitive rewiring that is rendering us incapable of switching from multi-tasking to the concentration necessary for deep reading (191). Is this the fault of the tools we are using or a symptom of a massive change in cultural values accelerated by the availability of technology? Is it really so difficult to switch from using a computer during the day to deep reading of poetry at night? What are your reader responses to different media on an intellectual and on a visceral level?

Class E-Mail Responses

Susan's Response

When I sat down to consider the questions that Bonnie has raised in her discussion of Birkerts, Part Trois, I quickly discovered a need to map, to draw relationships spatially on a piece of paper. And although this involves writing rather than the reading Birkerts foregrounds, I think it is significant in that it so clearly illustrates that different tasks require different tools. While Birkerts does suggest that there are different reasons for reading (to his list of reading for information, for personal "truth," and to analyze, I would add "for pleasure"), he does not seem to acknowledge that there are equally rich and valid ways to read, depending on the reading task at hand. And when I wonder why he focuses so minutely on deep reading of primarily canonical texts, I stumble again and again onto the concept of "difficulty," and how Birkerts equates it with value.

As I look at this list, it has to do with access, and that annoys me. When the possible equation of difficulty = elitism + exclusion came up on Saturday, Birkerts used a sports analogy to suggest that society values the achievement of basketball stars or scalers of the Matterhorn, and that those tasks are extraordinarily difficult. But while basketball may be theoretically accessible as a career for anyone willing to work at it (deep dribbling?)--and 6'6" tall--the mountain-climbing example--an expensive, time-intensive undertaking--actually supports my contention. All that said, I do think that technology often encourages (although not necessarily rewards) superficiality--breadth over depth--and it concerns me. I don't believe that the written word "means" in the same way whether written longhand or on a keyboard. And it _is_ hard switching from using the computer during the week to deep reading on a quiet afternoon. It's terribly hard. Maybe it's my aura. A student just stuck her head into my office and said, "My, you put in long hours." I looked at my watch and discovered that it's 5:25, and I'd planned to be out of here by 5. Electronic immersion in text _is_possible.
Lewis' response
I suppose that I share Susan's concern that Birkerts's values seem too often to be mapped onto scenes of reading that are, if not elitist, then at least esoteric. Duration implies either leisure or work that allows one a great deal of unsupervised, unstructured time. Deep reading implies a semantic, syntactic, and stylistic repertoire that allows us to appreciate the artfulness of literary evocation, and that in turn implies a great deal of time for reading. Celebrating that sort of reading experience isn't so bad, I guess, but it irks me that Birkerts's _Gutenberg Elegies_ is so single-minded in its representation of reading, ignoring the other purposes that Bonnie hints at in her posting. A broad-based literacy curriculum needs to address reading for information as well as inspiration. That said, I will admit that I, too, lament the loss of time to read narrative fiction and nonfiction. I spend much of each day reading and writing analytical, informational, and argumentative texts. Most nights, I read narrative, even if only for ten minutes, before I sleep. But that felt need for stories told in prose has a history; I don't presume that it is a badge of honor or the only road to wisdom or glory. Frankly, I am more interested in another argument in which Birkerts touches on issues that Bonnie raised. He seems to figure electronic media as secondhand smoke--literate practices that pollute the atmosphere for folks who want to read meditatively. Though I may be capable of "code-switching" from reading the New York Times or a novel to reading email, I probably cannot carry an infinite repertoire of reading skills, all honed to a fine edge. Birkerts quotes Trilling's assertion that "the emotional space of the human mind is large but not infinite, and perhaps will be pre-empted by the substitutes for literature" (173). I don't have to privilege literature to be curious about the mechanism by which any mode of communication and affective response might be pre-empted. Is it simply that time spent with one medium cannot be spent with another? Or is it the case that have a limited emotional range, such that a certain level of sophistication in, say, analysis prevents us from immersion in narrative (at least insofar as immersion depends on a suspension of disbelief)? Bonnie asked us to reflect on our own reading practices. Lately, I find less and less time to read for transcendence :-). I've been reading a genre of nonfiction prose--nature writing--for reflection and research; I tend to read prose fiction purely for pleasure, perhaps because I have rich memories of extended periods of reading for pleasure during times of my life when I had fewer responsibilities. I can't see my way to blaming that pattern entirely on electronic texts, though I suppose digital media in general are implicated in the pace of modern life.
Andrea's response
I've been thinking about the distinctions Birkerts makes concerning genre--specifically how he privileges fiction as *the* sole vehicle for deep reading. Like Susan, B's elitism or at least esoterism trouble me and like Louie, I agree that "a broad-based literacy curriculum needs to address reading for information as well as inspiration." That said, I am frustrated with the lack of time I have for "pleasure" reading, particularly narrative. And, like Louie, I question the extent of our ability to code-switch. For example, while working in a 9 to 5 administrative job after finishing college, not long into the job I found myself incapable of doing any deep, analytical reading. I think this was for a couple of reasons. First, I was tired in the evenings, 2) I was out of practice, and I think cognitively rusty, and 3) I had no context for this reading--i.e. no one with whom I could share ideas about what I was reading. So I decided to go back to school. Doing my MA in literature & lit crit I became immersed in deep reading. However, I soon found that analyzing literary texts took away the *pleasure* for me. Ironically, I found that analyzing fiction critically, stripped away the deeper reflection I had so loved about narrative reading. So, I turned to the study of "nonliterary" texts--rhetoric. That way, I could do analytical reading and save fiction reading for pleasure. Have my cake and eat to too, I guess. Forgive this rambling, but I'm trying to map Birkerts' discussion onto my own experiences and it's tough. I'd love to hear other people's experiences and if they relate to or resonate with mine--or not.

Excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 6 of The Death of Literature by Alvin Kernan

At different times in human history different forces, now changes in the climate, then surges of religious energy, have affected cultural values and the social arrangements that instrument them. In the modern West, technology has increasingly provided the energy and direction for cultural change. Witold Kula has, for example, in Measures and Men, described the way agriculture and commerce were managed. Clocks, too, as David S. Landes shows in Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, changed life and thought with an accurate and increasingly cheap machine that directly changed the ways almost all things were done, from measuring the longitude to calculating speed. In our time, as the pace of technological change has increased, the bomb, the pill, the automobile, computer, and television have radically affected everything from international relations and sexual morality to where people live and the way in which they conceive of their own mental processes.

But technological change now comes in different ways than it once did. As a manufacturing society has become a service society, communications has increasingly replaced industrial production as the central business of the society. "The major modern communication systems are now so evidently key institutions in advanced capitalist societies that they require the same kind of attention . . . That is given to the institutions of industrial production and distribution" (Raymond Williams, 1976). Labor now "takes the form of men and women acting on other men and women, or more significantly, people acting on information and information acting on people" (Poster). And as communications has become the primary mode of production and the condition of labor, change has become less mechanical, with one thing directly pushing another, and more a matter of information flow Using the old mechanical model, we might say, for example, that the photocopier by providing numerous cheap copies of a printed work makes copyright less enforceable, and as copyright weakens the traditional views of individual creativity and originality that had it legitimated cease to be practical and therefore believable. An informational model of social change would reveal, however, without concern for priority, that the photocopier, weak copyright, structuralist poetics, new-style democratic politics, and numerous other social energies are all "saying" that texts are not so unique and particular as was once thought, or, more positively, that things of all kinds are much the same. In this new informational context, older views of copyright, originality, and artistic creativity would begin to lose plausibility and in time would simply disappear.

The great changes that have come to literature in recent years in the midst of a transition from a print to an electronic culture seem to be better explained by the informational model of change than a mechanical one. In the 1950s and early 1960s such books as Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication, Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy and Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato advanced the argument that the dominant mode of communication doesn't just change the way things are done but restructures consciousness. "The medium is the message" is the way McLuhan famously put the view that each of the major historical information technologies--oral, written, printed, and electronic--has modified perception and posited a different kind of "truth." Oral societies seek wisdom, manuscript and print societies knowledge and information, and, now, electronics manipulate bytes to produce data. The Greek world was transformed--philosophy for poetry, Plato for Homer--in the fifth century B. C. by the appearance of writing in an oral society, and the Western world was transformed again by the appearance of print in the mid-fifteenth century. And in the late twentieth century print culture is giving way to an electronic culture that stores and transmits information by means of such electric devices as the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and computer.

Primary modes of communication and information storage do not change all at once, or altogether. Orality is always a prominent feature of human society. In the age of manuscripts, society as a whole was still primarily oral, and when books were still few, the available texts were still read like manuscripts, numinous, magical in their physical being like the early Bibles. Wisdom came from poring over them again and again, reading with the intensity that produced, for example, Jewish Midrash or the biblical commentary of the Christian Church Fathers. "From the Middle Ages until sometime after 1750," according to Robert Darnton (1986) "men read 'intensively.' They had only a few books--the Bible, an almanach, a devotional work or two--and they read them over and over again, usually aloud and in groups, so that a narrow range of traditional literature became deeply impressed on their consciousness.

The E-mail Version of Kernan

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Technology and Literature: Book Culture and Television Culture
At different times in human history different forces, now changes in
the climate, then surges of religious energy, have affected cultural
values and the social arrangements that instrument them. In the
modern West, technology has increasingly provided the energy and
direction for cultural change. Witold Kula has, for example, in
Measures and Men, described the way agriculture and commerce were
managed. Clocks, too, as David S. Landes shows in Revolution in Time:
Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, changed life and thought
with an accurate and increasingly cheap machine that directly changed
the ways almost all things were done, form measuring the longitude to
calculating speed. In our time, as the pace of technological change
has increased, the bomb, the pill, the automobile, computer, and
television have radically affect everything from international
relations and sexual morality to where people live and the way in
which they conceive of their own mental processes.
But technological change now comes in different ways than it once
did. As a manufacturing society has become a service society,
communications has increasingly replaced industrial production as the
central business of the society. "The major modern communication
systems are now so evidently key institutions in advanced capitalist
societies that they require the same kind of attention . . . That is
given to the institutions of industrial production and distribution"
(*Raymond Williams, 1976). Labor now "takes the form of men and women
acting on other men and women, or more significantly, people acting
on information and information acting on people" (Poster). And a s
communications has become the primary mode of production and the
condition of labor, change has become less mechanical, with one thing
directly pushing another, and more a matter of information flow Using
the old mechanical model, we might Say, for example, that the
photocopier by providing numerous cheap copies of a printed work
makes copyright less enforceable, and as copyright weakens the
traditional views of individual creativity and originality that had
it legitimated cease to be practical and therefore believable. An
informational model of social change would reveal, however, without
concern for priority, that the photocopier, weak copyright,
structuralist poetics, new-style democratic politics, and numerous
other social energies are all "saying" that texts are not so unique
and particular as was once thought, or, more positively, that things
of all kinds are much the same. In this new informational context,
older views of copyright, originality, and artistic creativity would
begin to lose plausibility and in time would simply disappear.
The great changes that have come to literature in recent years in
the midst of a transition from a print to an electronic culture seem
to be better explained by the informational model of change than a
mechanical one. In the 1950s and early 1960s such books as Harold
Innis, The Bias of Communication, Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg
Galaxy and Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato advanced the argument that
the dominant mode of communication doesn't just change the way things
are done but restructures consciousness. "The medium is the message"
is the way McLuhan famously put the view that each of the major
historical information technologies--oral, written, printed, and
electronic--has modified perception and posited a different kind of
"truth." Oral societies seek wisdom, manuscript and print societies
knowledge and information, and, now, electronics manipulate bytes to
produce date. The Greek world was transformed--philosophy for poetry,
Plato for Homer--in the fifth century B. C. by the appearance of
writing in an oral society, and the Western world was transformed
again by the appearance of print in the mid-fifteenth century. And in
the late twentieth century print culture is giving way to an
electronic culture that stores and transmits information by means of
such electric devices as the telegraph, telephone, radio, television,
and computer.
Primary modes of communication and information storage do not change
all at once, or altogether. Orality is always a prominent feature of
human society. In the age of manuscripts, society as a whole was
still primarily oral, and when books were still few, the available
tests were still read like manuscripts, numinous, magical in their
physical being like the early Bibles. Wisdom came from poring over
them again and again, reading with the intensity that produced, for
example, Jewish Midrash or the biblical commentary of the Christian
Church Fathers. "From the Middle Ages until sometime after 1750,"
according to Robert Darnton (1986) "men read 'intensively.' they had
only a few books--the Bible, an almanach, a devotional work or
two--and they red them over and over again, usually aloud and in
groups, so that a narrow range of traditional literature became
deeply impressed on their consciousness.

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