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Digital Communities
Industry Members
Digital Ink vs. Paper
February 6, 2012 By Ulf Wolf
Jonathan Franzen is a good enough writer I guess, although the one novel of his that I did read, The Twenty-Seventh City, did not necessarily bowl me over. Well written, yes, but, well, let’s leave it at that (as being off the subject).
Recently the very same Franzen has—and quite publicly at that, in a Guardian article—come out of the analog closet decidedly swinging in favor of the physical, printed-on-paper book, saying among other things that he fears that eBooks will have a detrimental effect on the world, and that he believes that serious readers will always prefer print editions.
Speaking at the Hay festival in Cartagena, Columbia, Franzen went on to say, “Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I'm handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing—that's reassuring.
“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough.”
On many levels I agree with Franzen, especially with the view he has offered in the past that “it's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”
What I have observed over the last twenty or so years is that anyone with a keyboard and an Internet connection not only has been empowered to, but indeed has exercised that power and written something (or a lot) to then bandy it about the blogs and forums, not to mention the self-publication sites.
In contrast, in the “good old days” of publishing there was the Internet-less writer and, invariably, his equally Internet-less editor, who would not accept a manuscript as final until they were both happy with it and in a conflict the editor, often as not, had the final word, or at least veto powers.
The result was exactly what Franzen is talking about: a printed book with the language just right, and very likely to stay that way edition after edition.
My own experience also tells me that it does not matter how conscientious you are, or how many times you proof your own manuscript: you know what you want to say and so will read what you mean to say, not what you actually say. Another person, a friend, a colleague, or—yes—an editor, will spot things right away you have read past a dozen times.
The editor working with the writer will produce a book with the language just right; while the computer writer, mainlining on the Internet, will most likely not have the patience to do much more than spell-check (and bless these things, by the way—they’re getting smarter by the minute) his essay or story or letter, and sometimes—judging by some posts online—not even that.
The point is that I agree with Franzen that in today’s Computer/Internet environment it is doubtful that true literature will indeed be produced, or what we once—and what the hardliners like Franzen still do—considered true literature.
But we can’t really turn back the clock here. Amazon sells more Kindles than anything else, and more eBooks than print books. Fact. We have turned a digital corner, and no amount of wishing it hasn’t happened will change a thing.
And at this juncture, Franzen’s fear is larger than just the loss of permanence and loss of quality. What he fears is that “the combination of technology and capitalism has given us a world that really feels out of control.”
Again, I both sym- and empathize. Dickens’ heart would arrest on the spot were he to come for a visit. Not only is everyone writing (and mostly—I’m sorry to say—badly), but EVERYONE is writing: there is so much out there, so incredibly much out there that to dive for and find what pearls there are in this sea of digital text is near enough impossible.
What we’ve lost is the guard at the gate, the Editor.
Well, not entirely. The print houses still employ editors, and there good fiction (some of it fantastic) is still produced.
However, my prediction is that in the near future the Editor will become an endangered species, but that in the long term (after the world has grown frustrated with the sea of mediocrity washing ashore at every turn) the Editor will be tracked down and pressed back into service, only digital this time.
The digital publishing houses will then begin to stress that their ware has in fact been edited, and has in fact gotten the language just right.
This is more than a prediction, actually. It’s a prayer.
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More than an editor and author, print literature usually has quite a team to produce it. It is highly capitalized (financial sense of the word). In science, it is peer review that lends written findings authority. In literature, self publishing has always been given less respect than being selected for publication by a commercial house. In either case, having survived the gauntlet lends cred that splatting your text all over the internet just does not approach. That said, when something goes viral on the internet, the market is lifting it up out of the noise and cacophany, although in measure of popularity, not authority.
It was Theodore Sturgeon (IMHO, an outstanding science fiction author) who said that 90% of anything is crud. The gauntlet of paper publishing was fully alive and well at the time he said that. We now have "copywriters" who are paid $25K per short ad/article because at least some people recognize that the 10% is worth more than the 90%. So I suspect superb writing will continue to be 10% or so of all writing -- it's just that the base will be so much larger that the 90% to sort through will also be much larger. Rollie Cole PhD,JD Founder, Fertile Ground for Startups and Small Firms Helping Build Environments for Multiple Startups and Small Firms to Thrive