When my dad was out visiting to meet the Boy we talked about the three things we always talk about: 1) the Yankees; 2) the Simpsons; 3) literature.
The state of the Yankees, Simpsons quotes flying every which way, and authors, books, trends, the future, the past, the power of an art form...
At one point the conversation got to which countries care deeply about literature, which countries define somewhat their national identity by their literary experiments.
"In first place on that list," dad was saying, "would have to be Russia," which I took seriously because I know how much he loves a ton of authors and I know how much he loves France, speaks French, and reads content in French. He rarely speaks of the Russians. "And we'd be in whichever place is last."
I know what he's saying. but still: kind of a BUMMER. I mean, Twain, Faulkner, Pynchon, Wright, Denis Johnson...and my dad's still correct. American's don't have the same level of pride in their---OUR---writers like other nationalities.
So recently I wanted to see how the Internet felt. I typed "countries that care about literature" into a box and hit the return key to start the search.
The returns were symptomatic of the problem that makes me think we're on the precipice of a looming dark age for literature and literacy in general. Each link was about how Americans don't have regular access to health care because of financial constraints, or so the literature says.
Chalk that up to me typing in the wrong thing?
I've done action research projects before and "checking the literature" comprises an entire section of said project. And I guess "care," in the sense of online search engines, may automatically lead to healthcare.
But, wow, so off...SO OFF.
I refined the search and got to more of what I was looking for.
But my nerves were rattled.
It seems like in this "post-truth" Trumpian era words in America (the Western world? the entire world?) are hitting a trough. Their importance at conveying information and magic seems to be lost on the masses.
I started to think about three realms that deal heavily with words: journalism, book publishing, and the comic book industry.
Journalism: As we all have heard by now, readers' ability to get their "news" in the forms of listicles and tweets has had a deleterious impact on the newspaper as a public institution and the ability of a class of people---journalists---to make a living.
One problem is that people want their news in these forms, because the real NEWS is too difficult for most people to process, which makes it boring.
Sending reporters to places, international or not, to do the footwork of breaking a story---or just getting the information for a story---is expensive. And accurate stories about Serbian atrocities certainly doesn't sell ad-space like a list about which actor named Chris is hottest.
Do you hear me: ad-space? What a jerk...I meant "generate clicks," which itself is getting a little anachronistic. Maybe it should be "generate taps?" "Swipes?"
Book publishing: If you're JK Rowling or Stephanie Meyer or somebody publishing popular genre fiction, times are likely less lean than if you're a writer of literary fiction.
Genre fiction and literature are not the same thing. Just remember: a master of our time, Aussie Richard Flanagan, almost quit writing to work in the mines of northern Australia because he couldn't make ends meet. Winning the Man-Booker prize made it possible for him to continue writing.
Comic-book industry: A long interview with writer Matthew Rosenberg shed light on things of which I wasn't aware. Rosenberg writes a few titles for Marvel, one of the "Big 2" companies, as well as a few titles for independent companies on topics from his own imagination (of one of which I am a huge fan). He also used to work in a local comic shop.
His point was that very few titles are creating new fans of the media; that most new titles are really just trying to siphon off enough readers of other creators and companies to stay afloat, and that the amount of content being created now is unsustainable.
And there is a ton of content being created right now. I even have an entire blog dedicated to independent comics and their publishers. One thing that I think does a disservice to the comic medium is that finding the literature---and there is some beautiful literary-styled-art being made in the medium---is very difficult if you don't know where to look.
Not enough new fans...
People laying off learning about the human condition through words...
People not caring about news and getting "news" from things that aren't actual sources...
According to a Canadian research team the most cost-effective form of art: literature.
That study was about how they, as a country, would set up their National Endowment for the Arts. America's NEA, per capita, is less than many countries, even Uzbekistan, who has a known problem with government censorship.
Did you read that? Uzbekistan spends more money per person supporting artists that the US, and they have a censorship problem.
They also have less people than California, but more than Texas...
So, in honor of wanting to discuss the words that I've been looking at recently, I have some pictures of what I'm reading.
I get the Sunday edition of the LA Times, at a super steep discount and locked in for three years, but I have no pictures of the detritus littering the house and raising Corrie's blood pressure.
For Decemberween we asked for this book and were gifted it by my mom. Thanks, by the way (we're lagging on our thank-you notes).
It's mostly about how to get your kids to eat like French kids. In France parents don't over schedule their kids with a bunch of activities, but they do spend an inordinate amount of time teaching their kids about food. From a very young age (babies, mostly), French parents train their children about food, what different things taste like, what different methods of cooking do to food, and about how they---the kids---have no say in what is being served.
Also, by outlawing vending machines in school and having fine dining in schools be a universal French thing, by outlawing snacking, and by prioritizing food education, the French eat fats and carbs in the same amounts as Americans, but have populations that are absent the heart disease and obesity that we have here. Processed food is also rare...
It's written by a Canuck who met her French husband while they were both away at university in England. After starting their family in Vancouver, they both took sabbaticals to live for a year in the small beach town where the husband grew up in Brittany, France. She is Canadian, but her sensibilities are very familiar (see: an annoying American) and she refers to the "North American-style" in referencing the way things are done that American's will recognize. She is an award winning blogger and has helped try to start reforms in Canadian schools that resemble what happens in France.
She is also interminably annoying and unadventurous about food. On every page she writes something that gets under my skin. As much as I like her "French Rules..." for teaching your kids about food, as much as I like to hear about bloggers making good, I find I can't sit and read through the book in a single sitting like it calls for.
Decemberween before this past one, this next book was Corrie's present from Auntie Peg and Uncle Dan:
With the baby and plenty of other stuff going on reading time shrank.
But the other day she brought it out of the room, saying she wanted to finally get to it. Then the Boy needed some attention, and she went back to soothe him. My turn to tend to him is, like, every fifth time, maybe?
Anyway, I picked it and started reading it. I made it through the first dozen pages before Corrie returned. "No," she said with a laugh, "You're supposed to be reading my other book, the one French food one..."
"Yeah, but..." This book starts with a married couple who are anthropologists during the golden age of that discipline, when you could get funded to go live with some "savages" in a dense jungle somewhere. The couple, dirty, harried, covered in sores, are heading by swanky river boat to a Christmas celebration at a larger encampment in Papua that has, eh, civilization. The wife, who narrates this section, judges and is judged by two wealthy Aussie ladies, one married and the other single, during their half-day-long river jaunt. The women and the men can't hang out together...
I liked it enough to want to read more, that's for sure. I haven't gotten back to it, but I want to.
A few months back I had heard of the English translation from the French of a masterful graphic novel biography of Muhammad Ali. When I saw it at my local comic shop, I picked up the hard-cover:
It's great and breezy and dense and well-paced and written in the 2nd person, which is rare. Because it's in graphic-novel medium, it'll be over before I know it. It may be one of the finer pieces from the industry.
I'm also still working on the fantastic Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates' masterpiece on race in America:
***
So, where are we?
As a culture, we are not only anti-intellectual, we are anti-science, anti-good-ideas-if-they-disagree-with-my-wallet-or-politics, and, apparently, anti-truth.
Is there hope?
I have one charge who wrote every scene for her age-level in our age-related battle, and I have passed on my copy of Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Sometimes all you can do is give the right book to the right person at the right time.
And talk about literature.
And talk about the importance of a free and independent press.
And talk about the artistic possibilities of sequential art.
I'm staring off this precipice at the abyss, at the masses with their faces buried in their phones, their consciousness connected to fluff that won't last and carries no importance. I tell my son that it will get worse before it gets better, but that it will get better. Words have been a part of humanity for too long for them to be lost, and if they exist, someone will use them to make art.
I just hope he doesn't think I'm really just trying to convince myself.
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