"Some Cynical Guy" No. 58: December 30, 2001

Why Worry About The Future Of Books?

Doomsayers have been predicting the death of the book for nearly a century now. Movies, radio, TV and the Internet have all been implicated as culprits at one time or another. An earnest social critic named Sven Birkerts even wrote a book called 'The Gutenberg Elegies' in which he mourned the irreversible decline of the book in the electronic age. We could be witnessing the waning days of a bookish culture that extends back to the time of Columbus, an age when book lovers could define themselves by the assortment of volumes they collected on their shelves. You could embrace the genius of Shakespeare or learn how to renovate a bathroom, and it was all there in front of you. 

I have to concur with Mr. Birkerts that there's something uniquely satisfying about retreating into a book, with its palpable pages and sturdy covers.  It's pleasant to hold a book and watch your progress as the bookmark makes its way toward the hind end of the volume. Pixels on a screen just don't seem as real, and you can't scrawl those hasty little notes in the margins. But I'm still not convinced that the book as we know it is doomed to join the stegosaurus or the mastodon on history's compost heap -- at least not anytime soon.

Case in point: I strolled past a typical shopping-mall bookstore a few days ago. (You should know that I rarely ENTER bookstores these days, because my personal library has topped three thousand volumes -- this is not a boast but an abject confession -- and if I did nothing else with my time but read from this day forward, I'd still be sifting through the pages of my books when the polar ice caps melt.) Anyway, this particular bookstore I passed at the mall was chock-a-block with lusty suburban book consumers, who are different from hip urban book consumers in that they tend to base their choices on the bestseller lists -- books that are ALREADY successful and therefore deserve to be even MORE successful, much like young executives on the corporate fast track. 'To him that hath, more shall be given,' saith the Lord. I noticed the stacks of bestsellers piled high and deep, ready to entice herd-mentality book buyers with their brand-name appeal. The authors' names loomed large on the covers: Dean KOONTZ, Sue GRAFTON, John GRISHAM, Danielle STEEL. 

It almost didn't matter what riches the books did or didn't contain; at least the customer could be assured that he or she was buying a known commodity -- a comfortably consistent product. When you open a bag of cheese curls, you expect every curl to be orange and crisp and taste vaguely like cheese -- you'd be alarmed if you came across a mushy green one that reminded you of broccoli. So it is with the bestsellers in established genres like mysteries, horror, spy thrillers and potboilers. The authors of such books are like the CEOs of small industrial firms -- each book represents another product launch, targeted to a specific customer base whose likes and dislikes have most likely been scrutinized through focus groups. 

Especially clever are the writers like Sue Grafton who hit upon can't-miss marketing gimmicks, such as starting each successive book title with a different letter of the alphabet (though I wonder if she would have had the same success with, say, 'A Is for Absquatulate' or 'B Is for Brachiopod' -- I guess the woman deserves some credit for picking catchy titles). More recently, a Grafton wannabe decided to start all of her titles with NUMBERS. Imagine -- Grafton's reign comes to a close after a mere 26 volumes, whereas the possibilities of the numerical series are literally infinite! ('877 Maids a-Milking'... '10,261 Ways to Leave Your Lover'!) I'm waiting for a series that uses the names of all fifty states in the order in which they entered the Union. (What, you say it's already being written? And how will they find anything to write about Delaware?) Maybe I should start a series of 40-odd thrillers starring the presidents of the United States as moonlighting private eyes. I'm sure Chester A. Arthur, for example, would make a dapper and unforgettable crimebuster.

Oh, I don't mean to knock these generic authors for their flabbergasting successes. They tell a taut yarn, and I suppose they deserve all the loot they can haul away from the wretched craft of authorship. I DO mean to knock them for their shallowness and their glib approach to their craft, their brazen disdain for beauty and subtlety and the three-thousand-year-old tradition of honest-to-God literature. I also indict their readers for consuming their books like so many of those toasty orange cheese curls, and their publishers for slobbering over them with $10 million advances while patient Vassar-educated editors strain their eyes over the millionaires' undistinguished prose for $35,000 a year. 

I hope you won't think I'm some dour and dusty Puritan who condemns the concept of light entertainment -- you're looking at a 'Three Stooges' fan from way back. But maybe that's the point: when I want simple escapist diversion, I turn on the tube; when I want something more fortifying, I read a book. We all have a limited amount of time in our congested schedules to set aside for reading, and it seems shameful to use up two valuable (and non-refundable) weeks of our lives on an overhyped crime thriller when we could spend the same time luxuriating in the robust wordplay of Rabelais or the wistful melancholy of Chekhov.

Just possibly the worst offense of the blockbuster pop novelists is that they make the classic authors seem stuffy and inaccessible by comparison. Granted, much of classic literature IS stuffy and inaccessible; so, for that matter is a lot of contemporary literature -- which is why the most critically acclaimed writers of our time are virtually unknown to (and unread by) the general public. Today's solemn graduates of our writer's workshops surely must be writing to please OTHER solemn graduates of writer's workshops. They've essentially turned their backs on what used to be known as the 'common reader,' the book-lover who used to devour lengthy tomes by Dickens and Jane Austen the way today's readers consume Grisham and Grafton. It's no wonder that the book sales of our serious fictionmeisters tend to be so anemic. 

Today's literary writers might do well to emulate the hacks on one point: to keep in mind that a writer is obligated to communicate with the audience. ALWAYS. No exceptions, even for half-mad alcoholic poets. Although the hacks have little to say, they seem to have mastered the art of saying it clearly. They communicate and they entertain. That's an achievement they can look upon with reasonable pride twenty or thirty years from now, when nobody remembers their names. 

But we owe the hacks another debt of gratitude: unlike our thin-blooded literary authors, they've managed to keep the readers flocking to the bookstores year after year. As long as they do, we probably don't have to worry about the future of books. We just have to worry about the future of civilization.

Cynic's Pick of the Week
Osama bin Laden has proven to be as elusive as the Loch Ness Monster. We thought we had him surrounded at Tora Bora; now the Bush administration admits that he could be anywhere. He could be in Pakistan or even Argentina by now. Next time I hail a cab in New York, you can bet I'll check out the driver's face in his rear-view mirror.

© 2001 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," lives with his wife in a 100-year-old former livery stable in Philadelphia. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online.