PBS' Frontline did an excellent program last night on our Digital Nation. It covered a variety of issues including tests that showed how young people who think they are excellent at multitasking are actually much slower at comprehending and reacting than they realize. I highly recommend you check it out if you didn't see it.
Apropos to this blog is something I have long suspected, which is how all this constant digital interaction affects reading and writing. One college student said he never reads books anymore, but refers to the "Cliff Notes." And as far as writing goes, studies have shown that students at the better colleges are able to write excellent paragraphs but unable to put those paragraphs together into a cogent argument. Anecdotally, many students agreed.
Considering the theme of my blog, I certainly don't need to point out I am not some old fogey who hates change. The Internet improved my life both as a writer and a reader. It has provided me with opportunities, like editing for literary journals, that I could otherwise never have dreamed of. On a less personal note, I've also mentioned many times how I believe the Internet saved short fiction and poetry, both of which had lost ground to popular novels.
But Digital Nation isn't just about laptops. It's about laptops and Blackberries, cellphones and iPhones, texting, IMing, watching videos, playing games, Facebooking, Twittering, and more––all at the same time. It's about professors competing with whatever else students can have up on their laptop screens––that the profs can't see––and Tweet time competing with homework time. It's about being in constant contact and entertainment mode every waking hour and waking hours extending into sleep hours in order to keep up with it. It's about being on call 24/7.
Many of us who did not grow up with these constant distractions have convinced ourselves there is nothing wrong with learning this way. Inherent in this thinking is the assumption kids are learning, and maybe they are, though the studies I mentioned at the outset say differently. Maybe the study was biased in some way or the yardstick isn't appropriate. Still, there are two types of learning. There is learning facts that can be regurgitated on a test and there is learning to think and problem solve. These latter require the ability to stay with a subject for an extended period and being able to link thoughts together to form a logical conclusion. That's what we're losing in this digital age, and not just among kids, but among many middle-aged individuals who have bought into the digital barrage as well.
Reading doesn't have to be in print, but reading book length works of fiction or nonfiction trains our minds to move slowly and stick with a project to its finish. The ability to concentrate separates older children from younger; adults from teens. It's the reason why adults, generally, tend to act less impulsively than kids. Reading the original piece also teaches us to go deeper into issues and form our own opinions. Cliff notes, on the other hand, tell us what the story is about and how we are supposed to interpret it.
Extremely well written paragraphs or 140 character Tweets are great, but I have yet to see a truly complicated and nuanced matter that can be expressed without stringing paragraphs together. Seeing a problem as fragmented pieces will not help solve it. Indeed, it can add to he confusion and overwhelm.
I'm not sure I have an answer to this. Can you turn back the clock? Probably not, but I wonder if, at some point, these kids might reach the breaking point. My generation––Boomers––lived by the TV schedule growing up. Yet many of us started turning off the TVs when we got older. Maybe our kids will start turning off their phones at dinner time or lift their eyes from the screen to notice the sunrise one morning and be transformed.
As for me, I'm sticking with the land line and cell use only for emergencies. I keep the buds out of my ears when I go for my morning walk. At night I read a book.
Showing posts with label reading and writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading and writing. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Monday, October 12, 2009
The New Yorker Redux
I've taken more than my share of swipes at The New Yorker on this blog, but lately it appears that "times they are a-changing." A good bud of mine passes his New Yorkers to me at the gym, and I trade him my New York Review of Books. Recently, I'd actually describe about four out of five of the stories I read in that venerable periodical as "memorable." Quite a change from what I've read there in the past.
It started, for me at least, in the April issue with "Tiny Feast" a story by Chris Adrian about a faeries who adopt a mortal child who is dying from leukemia. It reminded me of Lorrie Moore's "People Like That..." only with a fantastic twist that made it quite endearing. Everyone I mentioned it to was enthralled by it. Other memorables were a Twilight's Zone type story by J.G. Ballard about a man who wakes to find himself the only person left alive in London; a wonderful story by Salmon Rushdie about two elderly Indian men; and, speaking of Indians––the American kind––Sherman Alexie had a story in the August 10 issue, but then I rarely find his stories disappointing.
Part of why these stories seem so vibrant could be that many are by foreign writers like a woman named Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's story about a father who steals his daughter's body from the morgue and takes it to the hospital. This sounds morbid but turned out to be a charming piece of magical realism. Then there was the very haunting "The Tiger's Wife" billed as debut fiction by Tea Obreht.
So what does this all mean? Could it be that all the complaints have gotten through? No, I'm not suggesting anyone from The New Yorker reads this blog, but I'm far from the only one who has been complaining. Or could it be due to the success online publications have enjoyed in recent years at the expense of print literary journals? There's no doubt online readers prefer stories with a little more punch––or at least a real ending.
The New Yorker isn't alone. Narrative, the mostly online publication, publishes many of the same names who have been showing up in The New Yorker and other top-tiers for years, but the stories are much more interesting.
Might we dare to hope that we have turned a corner? Is the era of dull literary fiction finally dead? Has the style over substance philosophy finally petered out in favor of a well written story with killer similes that happens to also be good?
I guess it remains to be seen, but the signs are positive.
It started, for me at least, in the April issue with "Tiny Feast" a story by Chris Adrian about a faeries who adopt a mortal child who is dying from leukemia. It reminded me of Lorrie Moore's "People Like That..." only with a fantastic twist that made it quite endearing. Everyone I mentioned it to was enthralled by it. Other memorables were a Twilight's Zone type story by J.G. Ballard about a man who wakes to find himself the only person left alive in London; a wonderful story by Salmon Rushdie about two elderly Indian men; and, speaking of Indians––the American kind––Sherman Alexie had a story in the August 10 issue, but then I rarely find his stories disappointing.
Part of why these stories seem so vibrant could be that many are by foreign writers like a woman named Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's story about a father who steals his daughter's body from the morgue and takes it to the hospital. This sounds morbid but turned out to be a charming piece of magical realism. Then there was the very haunting "The Tiger's Wife" billed as debut fiction by Tea Obreht.
So what does this all mean? Could it be that all the complaints have gotten through? No, I'm not suggesting anyone from The New Yorker reads this blog, but I'm far from the only one who has been complaining. Or could it be due to the success online publications have enjoyed in recent years at the expense of print literary journals? There's no doubt online readers prefer stories with a little more punch––or at least a real ending.
The New Yorker isn't alone. Narrative, the mostly online publication, publishes many of the same names who have been showing up in The New Yorker and other top-tiers for years, but the stories are much more interesting.
Might we dare to hope that we have turned a corner? Is the era of dull literary fiction finally dead? Has the style over substance philosophy finally petered out in favor of a well written story with killer similes that happens to also be good?
I guess it remains to be seen, but the signs are positive.
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Bane of Being a Slow Reader
This post is for all those writers (and also to Amazon.com that regularly sends me free books) for taking so long to review your books. It's time I confessed. I am just an extremely slow reader. This is the bane of my existence as in most cases I do not agree to review books because I feel I should, but because I really want to. I want to see what my cyber-friend has been working on for the last two years or the memoir written by the gal whose essay I edited three years ago. And then there are those three or four books I find in the newsletter each month from the Vine program Amazon invited me to join last year. Even with piles threatening to topple on either side of my laptop I keep asking for more.
One article I read recently attributed slow reading to a mild form of dyslexia. People like me read slowly because, if we didn't, the words would get mixed up in our brains. I do read one word at a time. While, apparently, faster readers read word groupings.
When I was in grade school in the 60s speed reading was all the rage. Mainly because President Kennedy was a known speed reader. My Dad, also a slow reader, bought a kit with this contraption on which a little window––resembling a mail slot––sprung open revealing groupings you were supposed to read all at once. As you improved you were supposed to read longer groupings at a faster pace. Both my Dad and I would go back to it from time to time with the best of intentions, then get bored or frustrated and give up again.
When I was in sixth grade our middle school (called junior high school at the time) invested in a newfangled mechanism that projected words on the screen. The teacher could adjust the timing and then we'd be tested on our comprehension. Of course, since we did it as a class, we were supposed to raise our hands at the point it moved too fast for us to read, (which no one did), so I will never know if the other kids really could read at that super speed or if it was just me. All I know is I might as well have been reading a foreign language, and I felt like a huge failure, even though reading at my own pace I always gained high marks in comprehension.
That emphasis on speed reading skills seems to have died a well-deserved death, but still, for the sake of those whose books I review, and for my own sake, since there are so many books, both fiction and nonfiction I'm dying to read, I'd like to read faster. Well, actually, I would and I wouldn't.
This topic arose in a forum I participated in several years ago on the above mentioned Amazon when citizen reviews were a brand new idea. I learned there that many of the "fastest" readers really skimmed. That got me thinking about how all the best writers labor over every word. I myself, though I am certainly not one of the best writers, revise and revise and revise, not just cutting words but replacing them with others. Good writers look not just for meaning but the sound of words. All that work, so that someone can skim what they wrote and report back on the story? That seems a great waste of talent.
So really maybe an apology is not in order. Yes, I can understand why my writer friends would like as many reviews out there as soon as possible, but know that I am giving your work the attention all that sweat you put into it deserves. I am reading every single word for both meaning and sound, and when I review your book it won't be just about what you wrote but how you wrote it.
One article I read recently attributed slow reading to a mild form of dyslexia. People like me read slowly because, if we didn't, the words would get mixed up in our brains. I do read one word at a time. While, apparently, faster readers read word groupings.
When I was in grade school in the 60s speed reading was all the rage. Mainly because President Kennedy was a known speed reader. My Dad, also a slow reader, bought a kit with this contraption on which a little window––resembling a mail slot––sprung open revealing groupings you were supposed to read all at once. As you improved you were supposed to read longer groupings at a faster pace. Both my Dad and I would go back to it from time to time with the best of intentions, then get bored or frustrated and give up again.
When I was in sixth grade our middle school (called junior high school at the time) invested in a newfangled mechanism that projected words on the screen. The teacher could adjust the timing and then we'd be tested on our comprehension. Of course, since we did it as a class, we were supposed to raise our hands at the point it moved too fast for us to read, (which no one did), so I will never know if the other kids really could read at that super speed or if it was just me. All I know is I might as well have been reading a foreign language, and I felt like a huge failure, even though reading at my own pace I always gained high marks in comprehension.
That emphasis on speed reading skills seems to have died a well-deserved death, but still, for the sake of those whose books I review, and for my own sake, since there are so many books, both fiction and nonfiction I'm dying to read, I'd like to read faster. Well, actually, I would and I wouldn't.
This topic arose in a forum I participated in several years ago on the above mentioned Amazon when citizen reviews were a brand new idea. I learned there that many of the "fastest" readers really skimmed. That got me thinking about how all the best writers labor over every word. I myself, though I am certainly not one of the best writers, revise and revise and revise, not just cutting words but replacing them with others. Good writers look not just for meaning but the sound of words. All that work, so that someone can skim what they wrote and report back on the story? That seems a great waste of talent.
So really maybe an apology is not in order. Yes, I can understand why my writer friends would like as many reviews out there as soon as possible, but know that I am giving your work the attention all that sweat you put into it deserves. I am reading every single word for both meaning and sound, and when I review your book it won't be just about what you wrote but how you wrote it.
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