University Diaries » Stephen Fry Makes a Good Point…

… in a BBC interview. He’s talking about the attack on the internet as an avenue of illiteracy amid the decline of the novel.

I doubt you can find any sentence describing how human learning has degraded now that isn’t congruent to a similar sentence written at the time of rise of the novel – about how people were no longer reading sermons and classical literature, but were reading novels from subscription libraries instead.

The literature at the time in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, describing the contempt that the learned establishment had for the rise of the novel – and then of course later with the rise of the penny dreadfuls and sensational literature as more and more people came to read it – again there was a great cry of despair at how there would be nothing but illiteracy in the world, or at least a kind of refusal or inability to engage in proper, serious study.

And we hear the cry again.

The novel is indeed a rather disreputable form. Many of the novels UD teaches were banned, or in some way suppressed, or subjected to serious legal trouble, when their publishers attempted to release them.

Whole syllabi of hers constitute once-criminal elements: Lolita, Madame Bovary, Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer… Some of the poetry she assigns had run-ins with the law, too — Ginsberg’s Howl had to lie low for a year before being ruled non-obscene.

And, as Fry suggests, the content of novels, involving the murk of personal relationships rather than loftier spiritual or classical meditations, seemed to many people degraded.

I mean, plenty of communities in the United States continue to attempt to suppress various novels.

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Stephen Karlson Says:
March 10th, 2009 at 2:16PM

I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the ancient deep thinkers didn’t leave a stone tablet somewhere bemoaning the effect of ink on papyrus (such an impermanent medium, with such potential for any scribbler to scribble!) on the quality of thought.

Michael Tinkler Says:
March 10th, 2009 at 3:09PM

Well, yes. I wouldn’t wonder if Walker Percy might not refer to La Soltana as a pornographer.

The novel is a terrible, terrible mess. And I love Naples and New Orleans, too.

Margaret Soltan Says:
March 10th, 2009 at 4:50PM

It’s funny, though, Michael. I’m a huge admirer of Percy’s novel The Moviegoer – a book that has plenty of drifty meditation about sex in it…

Margaret Soltan Says:
March 10th, 2009 at 5:23PM

But Michael: How do you feel about Salt Lake City?

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_11855189?source=most_viewed

Timothy Burke Says:
March 10th, 2009 at 9:01PM

Not to mention that the novel began as a degraded low-culture form whose popularity made it suspect among guardians of culture. (Much as drama at a slightly early moment had been suspect.) More than anything else, this ought to give folks who want to defend high culture against the popular today some degree of consternation.

Shannon Chamberlain Says:
March 10th, 2009 at 10:07PM

I forget which Greek (Plato, I think) complained that the effect of literacy was the destruction of memory.

meteechart Says:
March 11th, 2009 at 5:53AM

To summarize the argument that goes around every time a politician tries to shut down an art exhibition – it’s a testament to the power of the art and the art form itself. People don’t need to bother with decrying things that have no power.

–

I don’t see any correlation between high vs. low culture & good vs. bad. The nice thing about high culture is it’s easier to filter out the crap. It’s not as if the whole endeavor is spread on a billboard around every corner.

Timothy Burke Says:
March 11th, 2009 at 7:30AM

The point is that there’s actually something of a difference between efforts to suppress the novels that UD mentions and what Fry is talking about. The novels that UD mentions were suppressed because they were deemed to have immoral content, but even the censors (sort of) conceded that the novel as a form was legitimate "art". Fry is pointing to the historical origins of the novel, when the entirety of the form, all novels, were seen as disreputable, lowbrow, mere entertainments. As well as being seen as signs of the distasteful impact of the spread of printing technology. Fry means that to caution against a similar reaction to online media today.

david foster Says:
March 11th, 2009 at 9:41AM

Thoughts on the impact of media technologies on human consciousness: duz web mak us dumr?

Also: CEO of E Ink argues that electronic reader technologies will help preserve serious literacy against tweeters and bloggers.

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