The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living - Part 5: Rekindling the Passion of English Literature

If there's something which has really begun to worry me about the progression of humanity into a technology-controlled world, aside from the obvious anxiety about our nearing ever-closer to a totalitarian, dictatorial, technologically-advanced, morally-inept, successfully-progressed globe somewhat resembling a combination between Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Terminator series, my own novel (half-way through production now... I know, shameless plug) and the Conservative Party's manifesto, it's the clear fact that culture is fading away from our world. By 'culture', of course, I refer to all the arts, be it theatre, sculpting or engraving, but there is one which, as it apparently declines in popularity, affects the writers of The Pessimist Chronicles more than anything other. We are, after all, students of English Literature.

I am of course referring to the perceived decline of the book. That is not to suggest that the novel, as an artform, will soon be gone: people still read; films are still used as the primary basis for the majority of films and television series; English Literature continues to be a popular, competitive and respected subject for a Batchelor's Degree. In fact, with the internet effectively giving us knowledge at our aching fingertips, the non-fiction book is probably at more risk of experiencing a premature form of literary rapture than the novel. What does concern me, however, is the fading out of the novel in its beautiful, physical form, in favour of e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle or Apple iBooks. Goodbye paper: computers, as we have known all along, are the way forward.

While deciding upon the ten areas of modern living which would make the best subjects for my Pessimist's Guide to explore, interestingly, the shunning of the physical book did not spring immediately to mind: perhaps I am just more of an optimist than is suggested by the title of our blog or, indeed, of this publication, but maybe - just maybe - it is simply a more surreptitious change in society than any of us expects.

Perhaps my anxieties were first truly awakened at the start of the current academic year when, upon perusing the new slightly-updated English style sheet, my eyes moved across a category I had certainly never seen before: how to reference quotes from Kindle editions of books. At first I was surprised - the idea of the University of Winchester supporting such devilish crimes against literature was shocking. But, in my naïve way, I ignored it: I was going to continue using paperbacks, I had long ago resolved, and so this did not concern me.

The true students and devotees of the book would surely remain steadfast.

How wrong I was. Within a matter of weeks I saw the first of the 'I will never cave into the fad' students sitting on a bench on the King Alfred Campus reading of nothing less than one of the offending devices.

To say my world came crumbling down around me would be an exaggeration, and a clichè worthy of the worst kind of paperback thriller, but I did feel somewhat despondent. Could this truly be the beginning of the end, as Amazon constantly tried to imply to me every time I logged in?

(Apparently there's a new type of Kindle coming out with a touchscreen. You know, just like the old one).

Of course, the apocalypse wasn't coming as soon as everyone seemed to want, but the threat was certainly nothing if not there and present. That dream study of mine when I'm a kindly old man with a PhD and an endless supply of knitted jumpers with oak bookcases lining every wall of the room filled from head to foot with paperback copies of William Shakespeare, George Orwell, Sebastian Faulks and P.G. Wodehouse suddenly seemed an impossibility: by the time I'm that age, I realised, there would be no such thing. I would probably be housed in an all-white office, dressed in an all-white latex outfit with a chip in my mind allowing me to control everything I wanted to type on a computer screen and all my books downloaded onto one e-reader with more memory than the oldest elephant. The thought still makes me shudder, and were I to experience it in the land of dreams I am certain I would wake up in the old clichè of a very, very cold sweat. The primary aesthetic feature of the book would be gone; there would be nothing tactile for me to nerdgasm over. From another area of my studious mind, one of the other, darker things the book gives us is the ability to show-off with very little legwork - people can simply glance over our bookshelf to know exactly what kind of literature we read, and they can then decide for themselves whether to mock us as a follower of Delia Smith, respect us as a fan of Daphne du Maurier or fear us as someone who can read Chaucer. With an e-reader, anyone can say 'I've got The Decameron on there' and be believed whilst having no more knowledge than what we could garner from a brief look over the Wikipedia article on the darned thing.

Congratulations: Odds are you now know more than the person living next door to you.

However, perhaps us followers of the book shouldn't be too concerned. E-readers, for all their benefits, aren't as great as they first appear. At least for study, they can be a nightmare, and the majority of those whom I know are owners of such devices have vowed to return to the book as soon as finishing their degree, having only adopted the things in the first place because it makes their studies cheaper in the long-term. After all, you cannot simply go to a line or passage on a Kindle without a lengthy period of time spent just flicking through the pages. Words cannot describe the fun to be had in the great second-year module 'Chaucer and His World' where, every Wednesday morning, without fail, I would be able to irritate our very own Alex White by telling him a handy quote could be found at line 3200 of 'The Miller's Tale', being well-aware all the time that this would be about as helpful to him as a cheese-grater would be for chopping carrots.

Despite this, however, there still seems to be an obsession with trying to sabotage the reputation of the book. In a recent episode of All-Star Family Fortunes which I happened to catch (by which, of course, I mean 'was forced to watch because I couldn't think of a good excuse to leave the kitchen while still eating my dinner'), one of the prizes - an Amazon Kindle, in fact - was advertised by a foolish Falstaff-esque gentleman falling about the place because he was trying to carry a large stack of ancient-looking tomes around with him while on holiday. The fact that nobody ever takes more than one or two paperbacks away with them didn't even seem to enter into the equation.

Come on, fellow pessimists! Let us not cast the book asunder and force it to burn alone in the icy cold of a watery grave. Rise up, and do not let that most pleasurable of pastimes become victim to the rising surge of technology that is fighting its way across the world, conquering all in its path! Perhaps it is just the academic in me, but knowledge should come in physical form, and not simply be able to be removed with the mere clicking of an 'off' switch.

As the legendary character of Rupert Giles (as played by Anthony Head) once said:

'Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no texture, no context. It's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible; it should be... um... smelly.'

And I can't say I disagree.

William D. Green

Amazon Kindle image taken from www.amazon.co.uk; Wikipedia image adapted from www.wikipedia.org; Buffy the Vampire Slayer image courtesy of www.screened.com - These images may not be situated in the same location in the post if this page is viewed from a mobile application, but this should not adversely affect your reading experience.