Civilization and its table of contents
Daniel Abraham suggests that movies are increasingly more important to our culture than books because there are fewer of them.
It is physically impossible for anyone to keep up with the body of literature we’re producing. The best anyone can do is pick and choose, creating idiosyncratic personal reading lists. And maybe someone else at the table also read Tevis’ The Queen’s Gambit. Maybe not.
Credo: Just being well educated doesn’t make you civilized. Something can only be socially relevant if it can be shared and discussed. Furthermore, it is only civilizing (that is to say something that brings people in a culture together in a way that strengthens the basic social fabric) if it can be shared across socioeconomic and sub-cultural lines. Books are now being produced at a rate that undermines this role.
Movies (with their incredibly high production values) are still sparse enough that they can act as a shared context for both CEO and roofer. Red and blue America (to use the idiom of the day) could sit across the table and discuss the merits of Drew Barrymore in a way that they couldn’t talk about Tom Clancy (much less Georges Perec).
Rather than try to organize my muddled thoughts about this into an informative comment, I'll just provide the direct link to the entry in question:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/bram452/9843.html
Welcome back!
Posted by Dan Percival on August 23 2005 10:07
=v= Well, this is why there are book clubs. You gather up a group of acquaintances, all read the same book, and discuss it.
As for movies, it's not like society and community is going to be embiggened by conversations like, "Wasn't Drew Barrymore hot in that movie where she took off her shirt?" and "The 4th episode had better explosions than the 5th."
Posted by Jym on August 23 2005 13:11
I wouldn't say that the answer to such a broad range of books is to have everyone watch TV instead. The problem is that anybody can get a book published these days, and the market is flooded with low-quality trash literature.
Posted by elguajiro on August 23 2005 13:28
Thanks, Dan; I corrected the link in the entry.
Book clubs create a greater pool of common referents for a group of acquaintances; outside the Oprah Book Club, they don't have much impact on a US-sized culture. He's talking about books' relevance to culture at large, not about finding people to talk with about books per se.
And, elguajiro, you might notice that Daniel never said anything remotely resembling the answer to a broad range of books was having everyone watch TV instead. The only place where he was remotely prescriptive, as opposed to descriptive, was in the final sentence, where his conclusion was quite the opposite.
Posted by Zed on August 23 2005 16:45