Last week I received a long and very thoughtful letter from a fellow student that (after giving me a well-deserved jab in the abdomen for a few self-deprecating remarks I made in an earlier post) asked me to address the following two-quite legitimate-concerns. As he/she requested to be kept anonymous, I will do my best to paraphrase:
1) Doesn’t a literary “blog,” by virtue of its abstract, anti-social, and virtual nature risk losing something basically human about discussions on literature?
To be fair, my friend, I think the answer is yes. There is significant risk associated with this project, and I think you are exactly right to locate a part of this risk on the medium. For one thing, it does seem to be the case that good discussion about literature are good as much for the intimacy that they support between conversants as they are for anything we might hope to uncover about literature. What I think you are pointing to (and please correct me if I am wrong) is the following question: to what extent does the medium of the Internet dehumanizes communication?
On one level, it seems perfectly obvious that it does. When we look at instant messaging and email and the quick often thoughtless way in which they are released, it seems pretty clear that they are not comparable as modes of communication with the Letters I spoke about in my last post (and that is to say nothing of the violence committed behind the strange veil of anonymity that the Internet so quickly affords).But on another level I think the situation is less clear-and may have more to do with our own shortcomings (which the medium of the Internet merely brings into relief) as communicators.
What I have in mind this the following: A few weeks ago I was in a meeting with Professor Howell Chickering in which I was making the case to him for opening up the Bruss Room to English Majors (precisely on the grounds that English Majors needed an intimate space to have the sort of fireside literary discussions your letter alludes to). Part of my argument for the room in that meeting had to do with the Department’s symbolic poverty-that we had no rich, collective symbol.I tried to point to Johnson Chapel as a possible source of “rich” unity for English Majors (on the grounds that it is both beautiful and old). Professor Chickering, thankfully, balked at this and pointing to his temple replied, “The richness is all up here.” In other words, he was suggesting that I had confused a basic premise of my argument–that paramount among the resources offered to us at the College is the richness of each other’s minds. In this sense, I find the argument that the Internet (and by implication-god help me-the “blogosphere”) inherently dissolves the richness of human expression somewhat weaker.
If you really want to know the truth, I think that there is a deeper problem here, and that is, that none of us have really been taught how to write–properly with or about feeling. I do not mean this in the sense of the self-esteem movement, and I am not a proponent of uncritical self-expressionism. To my mind these exist on the same level as exhibitionism, and are generally much less amusing. But rather I mean it in the sense that we have not yet learned to write them, our feelings-to take impressions and unrefined experience, to think about them critically, to handle them, to familiarize ourselves with them, to re-read them, and then to organize them, with whatever strength our constitution allows, into something which is not simply a mechanical reaction to our environment-a whine or a yelp-but constitutes a honest reflection and a real response. For inevitably, as we move towards preparing a feeling to be communicated, we must (if we are paying any attention at all) move deeper into that feeling and maybe even learn something about it.
When we speak of the lack on intimacy across electronic mediums, I think what we are really recognizing is the lack of cultivated feeling and the preponderance of emotional indolence that we hear (whether we recognize it in the moment or not) as the great white noise of the network age. All it takes is a quick comparison with the richness we have (probably at least once) experienced in another’s company to convince ourselves that the lameness of our discourse is due to the Internet-to the emergence of “blogs” where there were once drawing rooms-and not in any way to ourselves, and how we still have not learned to speak.
Don’t get me wrong, I am in favor of drawing rooms and fireside conversation of all sorts. I do not mean to have argued against these. I only mean to suggest that although our world has changed, the choice need not necessarily be between a Romantic (or romantic) attachment to an archaic past literary culture or our more “modern” soul-less chats. I believe there may yet exist other options. I intend, in so far as I can, to make this “blog” one of these options. I cannot help myself:
Men at some times are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Thank you again for the thoughtful letter. I think there is plenty here to discuss for this week. Depending on how things go I plan on addressing the second and more difficult question that was raised next week.
Xairete
10 responses so far ↓
1 Rachel Edelman (redelman09) // Apr 29, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Ryan, you seem to be questioning the role of environment in discussion. On one level, the places we inhabit should be trivial. One should be able to have meaningful conversation as long as all those taking part in the discussion are engaged in the matters at hand.
Yet we can’t seem to become as engaged with a computer screen as we are with a face in front of us. An example: When I am talking to someone about a poem, we are both contributing to a pool of ideas from which a conclusion or resolution might come forth. When posting on a blog, I am alone in my thoughts, even if others are reading them. It’s a slower form of conversation that requires a different kind of dialogue, one that we might learn to appreciate here.
These two levels of engagement with literary conversation are not meant to be mutually exclusive. They should complement each other, especially here at Amherst. Literary initiatives like this blog, Pepper, or any other written journal are meant to spark conversation, not contain it. These conversations ultimately have to leave the page if they are to provoke collaborative thought. The environment a discussion takes in should be constantly changing so that new ideas are constantly being shared and criticized.
2 Woody Brown (wbrown11) // Apr 30, 2008 at 3:31 am
Ryan, in response to your point about the distance of the so-called “network age” and a lack of intimacy across digital media as significant of our own inability to express ourselves: What basis do you have for this conclusion?
Sure, it is romantic and convenient to conclude that we are simply not trained enough to be as artful as the famous wordsmiths of olde. This is essentially a damnation of modern creative writing, however. You imply the existence of an alternate plane of creativity where we can “truly” be in touch with ourselves, but I think this is a fallacious and unnecessary deprecation of anyone who has written since the advent of the internet. The “network age” is not an age without face-to-face communication. People still talk all the time. I never got this sort of nostalgic view of things; the idea that things used to be way better and now they are culturally void; that old people are better or more valid than new people. If you look at my post on No Country for Old Men, I touch on this same subject. It is out of fear that we grasp for these ideas that the future is bad or destructive or something to work against. But with wisdom, we realize that this is how we always feel; nervousness or apprehension about the future is cyclical and perpetual.
Whenever someone talks about this issue, I think, “I wonder if the Phoenicians got as stressed out about the advent of the written word.”
I guess in closing I would just say that I find your religious claim that you will strive for a nirvana-esque literary divinity to be misled and largely nonsensical. I’m reminded of a line from a song by the band Moxy Fruvous: “I don’t know what these words mean/I just want to play where it’s clean.” I don’t particularly know what you’re talking about, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist. And if it does, it is nothing short of hubristic to claim you can attain your flaccidly defined “honest reflection” or “real response” in the face of everyone else’s modern nonsense.
3 Max Suechting (msuechting11) // Apr 30, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Woody -
First of all, twenty punk/indie points for quoting Moxy Fruvous. Hell yeah. Also, a nice insight on the Phoenicians (I’m going to guess they didn’t).
Secondly, I’m not convinced that Ryan is imagining that we’re not as artful, but more that the manner in which we communicate nowadays is becoming less meaningful, or at least less insightful, in light of its ease. As youth in a college setting, we’re living in an exponentially streamlined culture - texting, e-mail, facebook: the ways in which we communicate (as a generation) require less and less effort, emotional or otherwise, and in doing so cheapen the communication.
Rachel -
I agree with your first two points completely, and your third to an extent. I guess I feel like
the comment “These conversations ultimately have to leave the page if they are to provoke collaborative thought” sums it up pretty well: we have to be sure to bring them to life instead of just letting them wilt on the internet.
4 Scott Smith (ssmith09) // Apr 30, 2008 at 6:20 pm
I think an idea that all of the above posters recognize but I write to highlight is that the value of the blog medium stems not from its humanity or inherent provocation of insight but rather in its efficiency and accessibility. The possibility of “fireside conversation” is greatly increased when you put a fireside on every desk and in every academic building on campus. The sheer profusion of computers on campus (and to an extent in the outside world) makes online communication incredibly appealing due to the possibility of such an inclusive and widespread conversation unhindered by time and space constraints. I just wanted to point out the value of this medium in starting and promoting conversation, regardless of the effects on the depth of the discussion.
Clearly the question above is more interested in the quality of conversation rather than the quantity, but I think we should make sure to focus on having conversation at all before we start demanding that it reach fireside status.
5 Aaron Nathan (anathan10) // Apr 30, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Good call, Scott. Woody and Max, I bet the Phoenicians were pretty damn freaked out by the advent of the written word. I would have been. You weren’t by the internet? I, like Ryan, lament the passing of the age in which written communication took our best expressive efforts by virtue of its being really inconvenient. Pen to paper, paper to post, whether by land or by sea…your pen pal could have dropped dead of old age or the plague before a response came back (ask Tennyson). I don’t at all think we’ve lost the ability, but we’re out of practice. But the idea was never to write flowery letters for the benefit of posterity; that would have been silly; nor is it now to IM and email in Johnsonian prose. We write to get an idea across. Now we have all these cool new ways, which we’re still mastering–we should be celebrating. But heaven help us all when deconstruction turns its eye on text messaging. Once again, I think Moxy Früvous said it best:
“Once I was the king of Spain,
(Now I eat humble pie.)
A palatial palace!, that was my home.
(Now I eat humble pie.)
I’m telling you I was the king of Spain,
(Now I eat humble pie.)
And now I vacuum the turf at SkyDome.”
6 Aaron Nathan (anathan10) // Apr 30, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I admit it. I just threw that in there to show I’d heard of Moxy Früvous, establish my indie cred, (or at least my former camp counselor’s indie cred), and show that I knew how to make an umlaut appear. But while I’m at it:
“I can’t wait, I’m lowering interest rates,
People say ‘King, how are you such a genius,
There’s a roof over our heads and food on our plates!’
Laissez-faire, I don’t even give a care,
Let’s make Friday part of the weekend,
And give every new baby chocolate eclair.”
7 Woody Brown (wbrown11) // Apr 30, 2008 at 10:34 pm
I have much respect for anyone who knows what’s up with Moxy Früvous. They are a hometown (Buffalo, NY) favorite. I remember when I met them back in 2003 at a free concert they played at in Lafayette Square. It was awesome.
In any case, my main point in response to Ryan’s argument can be summed up in this quote from No Country For Old Men: “Whatcha got ain’t nothin new. This country’s hard on people, you can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”
The fear of the future is nothing new. The complaint against this new medium of communication, namely that it lacks intimacy and personality, is, I would posit, very similar to the qualms people had with the typewriter during the time of its introduction. By pointing out the Phoenicians, I meant to take this argument to a (somewhat silly) point of origination. If you go back far enough, everybody has been stressing about something on the horizon. But, “you can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” No matter how much you would like to believe, Ryan, that this little section of the internet is your escape from the increasingly impersonal social structure around you, it’s not. In fact, your post is, at its most basic level, a direct response to this trend of decreasing intimacy, and is therefore intimately (sorry) tied to it.
In any case, I would just caution that we should not necessarily jump to the conclusion that the internet is “t3h DEBIL” because people send text messages all the time. Everyone says that; that’s not an interesting thing. The world is not going to end and neither will the human personality.
Woody
P.S. What is truly interesting is that Ryan thinks he has the superhuman or at least extra-societal ability to transcend the dichotomy between, in his words, “modern soul-less chats” and “archaic past literary culture.” He indicates that he intends to make this blog an exception to the rule. He says he intends to achieve this (groundless) nirvana of communication, this enlightened level of self-understanding and decidedly unstatic personal unity.
I would argue in response: Ryan, doesn’t that sound like, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, “one of the greatest and most naked messianic complexes”?
8 caravan70 (dpshupe92) // May 1, 2008 at 9:33 am
May I throw my “two cents” in?
I certainly don’t think a “literary blog” loses anything in terms of its basic humanity or grounding. Much as I lament its passing, being a bit older than most of the students here, the epistolary era ended quite some time ago. People communicate these days through blogs, online discussions, and other such technological means. And I think that anything that gets them talking about books, philosophy, or any other issue of note is a positive medium.
Yes, I recoil every time I see some abbreviation when I’m accustomed to seeing it typed out in full. But I try to see the message behind it. My chief pet peeve these days: Every day I sit in class and hear someone say “I feel like…”. You don’t feel in academia. You think, or you believe. You advance a case, or pose a question. Is this just a modern locution, I wonder, or intellectual laziness?
In any event, I think your project is an excellent one, and I hope it continues.
9 Ryan Milov (rmilov10) // May 2, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Well, I have to say that this has been a satisfactory beginning. I am obliged in this regard to all who took the time to post these thoughtful replies. Let us (hortatory!) continue on this course.
In response, I only intend to try and clear up the few misunderstandings I’ve noticed in the past few days, and suggest some more direction for this discussion to continue moving. For the sake of clarity (and so that readers will be able to find who it is I am responding to at different points in my response) I have organized my response by the poster’s name.
To Rachel–
I appreciate the accommodating nature of your response, and your willingness to work your ideas and my own into a sort of synthesis, but I’m going to be picky here, and pull some of them out of that (highly admirable) hybrid.
First, I have to register my discomfort with the model you propose for understanding conversation: that it consists of two or more people contributing to a “pool of ideas” from which new ideas arise. For one thing, it strikes me as a bit too disembodied. I think new ideas might be inspired by conversation, but I don’t think that they come (italics) from the conversation per se. The only reason I am making a fuss about what probably seems like a small distinction is because you use that model to understand the essential difference between person-to-person communication and communication via the internet. You suggest that in latter we are alone in our thoughts, whereas in the former (as thoughts are “pooled” we are not.) I’m not sure that this is the clearest way to explain the difference, and I think, to an extent, we are always alone in our thoughts. As this is a literary blog here is a bit of relevant literature as fuel for thought; the following excerpt is from the chapter “Solitude” in Walden:
“Men frequently say to me, ‘I should think you would feel linesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days especially.’ I am tempted to reply to such,–this whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.”
Of course, Thoreau always needs significant qualifying, and his capacities for having long, eloquent conversations with himself has always impressed me. Yet the basic idea of the passage, I believe, provides a strong counter-argument to your final conclusion that, if we are to have truly meaningful conversation, our thoughts must leave the page. All of which is to say–do they?
To Woody–
It’s great to hear that you feel so strongly about these issues, as the writer of a film blog yourself, we should, in the future, considering a conversation comparing the two mediums. In the meantime, I will try to clear up the confusions my post seems to have created in your mind.
The fact that you had to ask “what basis do you have for this claim?” only points to my shortcomings as a writer, and for these I apologize, yet in order that you might understand my basic argument more clearly I have now laid it out in premise-conclusion format:
Premise 1: Digital communication does not seem to hold within it the same weight of thought and feeling that has been held, in the past, by other forms of communication (i.e. letters)
Premise 2: The difference in “weight” must be the result of either a difference in the medium or a difference in ourselves. (or, and we can talk about this too, a bit of both)
Premise 3: The “weight” is not a result of the difference in the medium.
Conclusion: Therefore, the “weight” must be a result of some difference in ourselves.
If I were to locate where I think you had problems with what I was saying I would say it was all the way back in premise one. Please correct me if I am misrepresenting your argument, but what I was hearing from was basically the following:
Premise 1: The universe is essentially cyclical, and each age has a set of problems which are (if we factor out the superficial differences) essentially the same problems as every other age has had.
Premise 2: Digital communication is a part of the universal cycle.
Conclusion: Therefore, any real difference in “weight” that we perceive must be the result of a mis-perception on our part–for there can be no real (non-superficial) difference in the medium (as it is part of a cyclical universe).
Conclusion 2: And Therefore, the Internet is not the devil.
Conclusion 3: And Therefore, (this is actually a few steps down the road, but I think you do get here, or at least imply it), we have nothing to worry about.
It’s an interesting argument to play. For my own part, I tend to favor some version of a non-cyclic universe. Basically, because I think things have changed and that the problems we face now are not the same problems (though there might be some similarities) to the problems, to use your example, the Phoenicians faced. If I could qualify myself in this I will say that I think the problem of human communication–that is, one human being communicating his interior to another human being–is essentially (italics) the same problem, and it is a hard one, but I think the topography (italics) of the problem has changed somewhat, and that we are not helping ourselves if we don’t pay attention to the physical reality of our landscape.
Anyway, I was planning on saying more, but I have to leave this where it is for now. I hope this has helped to clear some of the issues up, and I hope this discussion continues–
xairete
10 Emily Wright (egwright09) // May 9, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I’ve been meaning to comment on this for a while, Ryan, in particular regarding your perception that we haven’t been taught “how to write–properly with or about feeling.” I hadn’t realized this was a deficiency of mine until I’d been at Amherst for over a year, but when I did, it was in conjunction with my discovery of the power of writing in the first person. Due to a combination of my high school training, my history major, and my own nervousness about expressing anything verging on personal, I held firmly to my high school teachers’ mantra that avoiding the first person - pretending that my interpretation of a poem or historical event was, in fact, objective truth - strengthened arguments. I made it through all of freshman year before a professor challenged that assertion…and then, a month or so into my second class with Professor Pritchard, he noticed that I had written more than a semester’s worth of papers for him without using the word “I”. I had talked about “the reader’s response” to assorted words, rhythms, punctuation, etc. without thinking of them as my own responses. I’ve started doing so since then. The first person remains absent from my history papers, and I’m still experimenting with it in my writing for the English department, but I’m grateful for that single comment from Professor Pritchard, and his encouragement to acknowledge that *I* was the one reacting to what I was reading. Even when I don’t express an idea as a personal reflection, I do find myself (as you write), “mov[ing] deeper into that feeling and maybe even learn[ing] something about it.” I don’t know if this can be taught, per se, or if encouragement to explore and experiment is really the best way of getting people to engage in this process. I do hope that this blog and the discussion it provokes facilitates it.
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