Books may never let us go?

Is all this necessary?

Parents of the boomers must have viewed television as a total enhancement to their lives. They grew up without it. No TV? And heavens, no other electronic media? Well, radio. People went to our old Carnegie Library in Morris and checked out "books." Thus they could be enriched and entertained. 

So books were really a "thing." They aren't today? 

Sometimes I wonder as I browse past the bookcases of new stuff at our Morris library: "Who reads all these?" 

Shall I assume that people really do? If it's yes, then I guess kudos to our culture of today. I'm surprised people still have an adequate attention span for a book. Remember that books are marketed as a product. Books need sheer length to be marketed as such. 

When people read books as a totally free-will decision, that's fine, even exemplary. I look at a lot of the non-fiction stuff and I think: "Man, this stuff must be padded." Remember that these books are made to be sold. We can assume they have superfluous material. 

The alternative? Well it's to learn from material online. As much as some highbrow types would decry the online world for being unreliable, superficial, sketchy and whatever, a discerning eye can identify many sources of knowledge that will expand you. This is in contrast to a book you might buy or check out from a library, which might sit around your home for quite a while, while you have so many other things to do. 

What are the odds that a thick non-fiction book from the library is going to be consumed in total? Of course I cannot speak for others. I cannot assume my own judgment is typical. Maybe an appreciable number of people really do digest the entirety of a very involved tome. I could only say "congratulations" to them. 

Only on rare occasions have I read a fairly involved book cover to cover. When I do, I rave about it, talk it up to others. It's interesting: In situations where this has happened, I will quickly try to locate another book on the same subject. I just assume that the page-turning quality of the first book will spill over to the others. I can think of two examples from my background, the outcome the same: I barely touched the succeeding book. I'll go through a few pages, yes, before it dawns on me "this book is a bore." It's so easy then to find something better to do. 

My observation about this is a testament to those authors who wrote the first book I consumed: They had a distinctive quality not easily repeated. It's as if the other books are written by pretenders. 

I say "with a discerning eye" one can tap the online world for considerable enrichment. So I feel I have the necessary intuition to choose wisely, to trust source material. The Internet really has become more of a meritocracy over time. The most meritorious stuff becomes easiest to find. 

Someday some very interesting histories of the Internet will be written. It was such a novelty in its earliest days. In its nascent form it was often described as a "swamp." It attracted people weaving conspiracies, snake oil salesmen. As if those interests are not still represented! Well they are. But with time, most of us have developed a feel for reacting properly, to know what is likely to have merit. 

There's always a gamble in consuming material from books and media. 

Andy Rooney

You remember Andy Rooney? A gimlet eye, yes, and a dated perspective frankly - a little misogyny, for example. He saw World War II up close. He said the war effort tended to be portrayed in our history books as having been so organized. He said in reality it was a "mess." Why was it so? Think a little: In a war, the two sides are always trying to deceive each other. The enemy may be evil but probably not stupid. Trial and error reigns. 

So let's tie Mr. Rooney in with the world of book publishing. The man with the gimlet eye talked about farm subsidies as he led in. "Paying farmers not to grow stuff." Of course it goes deeper than that - if it didn't, we might assail our political leaders as idiots. Rooney segued to the book publishing business. The video for one of his "60 Minutes" segments showed a bookstore, probably in a mall, full of all kinds of books. So Mr. Rooney cleverly asked "how many of these books have you read?" 

Could leave one speechless. So he concluded: "Maybe we should pay people not to write books." 

Now I shift my attention to the harried American college student of my generation, generally speaking the 1970s. If you're like me you can recall books to buy that were way too windy, overdone. This very quality led to the "speed reading" fad which purported to teach young people how to survive these reading tasks, by learning to glean the important stuff. 

Sheer speed should never be a goal when you set out to read something, n'est-ce pas? A person should always soak in the material which if well-written reflected a labor of love by the author. What's the hurry? Well the answer is obvious: The sheer volume of reading presented by books was too burdensome. 

So I'll ask the obvious question: Why couldn't authors condense more? Get to the (expletive) point? Well I'll attempt to answer this question. Two salient points I shall make. Number one, book publishing is a racket - well, a business, and you know how that is. Stuff has to be priced so it seems worth it. Make the book a little thicker. Any author can B.S. more. 

Second, college classes were themselves "rackets" to an extent: teachers striving to impress the world with the difficulty of their courses, their challenging nature. This being done partly so professors could show their own importance, the need to keep them employed, the need to grant them tenure. 

The Internet has done a lot to chop down that whole culture. And I don't think it is done yet. I walk into our Morris library and continue to see rows of new books that make me wonder: "Who reads all this stuff?" 

I learned more from the Wikipedia entry for Jesus Christ than I ever learned in my catechism assignments from church.

Andy Rooney with so many books! Look at that!

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com