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/lit/ - Literature

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15389825 No.15389825 [Reply] [Original]

Will there be a point in the 21st century when people start reading? Will literature ever again occupy a central place in the culture?

>> No.15389828

Most people read. You are not special.

>> No.15389832

>>15389828
False

>> No.15389836

>>15389832
For whatever reasons he's propably talking about twitter and restaurant menus.

>> No.15389840
File: 2.85 MB, 298x224, 1585770773620.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15389840

>>15389836
> propably

>> No.15389871

Not unless something disrupts the depressive hedonia of technology. Reading in the 21st century is viewed as an incredibly inefficient way of consuming information. People would rather view images and hear sounds since it's more efficient. If nothing is to disrupt this paradigm then the only other option would be to simply evolve alongside. What ideas or stories or conflicts you would have expressed in a book a century ago are better transposed into a more efficient medium of consumption, such as through film or song, or even a video game.

>> No.15389874

>>15389828
>https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/29/leisure-reading-in-the-u-s-is-at-an-all-time-low/
>22% of women and 15% of men read for pleasure on a given day

>> No.15389915

>>15389871
>ideas or stories or conflicts you would have expressed in a book a century ago are better transposed into a more efficient medium of consumption

I actually agree that a lot of non-fiction books (particularly those aimed at the layperson) are somewhat obsolete today. And clearly mindless entertainment like the pulp novel doesn't really need to exist anymore outside a niche status. For some reason though, pulpy fantasy and ya novels are some of (if not the most) thriving genres today.

But for books qua art, i.e. literature, I don't really see where efficiency plays into it? Name a single great novel that today could have been better communicated through a song or video game?

>> No.15389938

>>15389825
>ever again
you're massively over-estimating the influence of literature in the past

>> No.15389976

>>15389938
The upper classes used to be quite well read at least. That certainly is not the case now.

>> No.15389991

>>15389871
How exactly is reading inefficient? Nonfiction is by far the most efficient way to convey knowledge and it seems silly to compare the density of information conveyed by a movie/show as opposed to a novel.

>> No.15390009

>>15389976
Their kids are listening to nigger music as they do Molly and get black out drunk.

t. Ivy league grad

>> No.15390021

>>15389976

The upper classes were well read as part of their education. As adults they did not necessarily spend much time reading.

>> No.15390026

>>15390009
I know, I'm at an ivy (or was, quarantined now) and very few people seem to even do assigned class reading.

>> No.15390028

>>15389825
Sauce on the photo?
I think it's from Düsseldorf school of photography's member.

>> No.15390032

>>15390009
>nigger music
lmao ok ben shapiro

>> No.15390034

>>15390032

t. someone who listens to nigger music

>> No.15390035

>>15390028
Don't know who took the photo

It's the reading room at site richelieu, bibliothèque nationale de France

>> No.15390049

>>15389874
Most people don't read every day though. How many people read once a week?

>> No.15390053

>>15390034
unapolagetically so. It's awfully closed-minded of you to dismiss a huge portion of music because of the artists' ethnicity and you'll impress nobody in declaring it

>> No.15390075

>>15390053
I don't dislike all of it. Simply mainstream rap that promotes a mind numbing lifestyle to the masses. Lianne la havas is my waifu desu.

>> No.15390095

>>15390075
A little ignorant rap every now and then is good for the soul imo

>> No.15390122

>>15390053

It hardly is. Just as it isn't close minded of me to dismiss all of YA in one swoop. Its a generalization that might have me misjudge some works of quality, but on the whole I can well enough dismiss a whole category of works based on such generalizations and be none the worse off for it. The great majority of it, YA or rap, is just trash. I don't support the glorification of violence and drugs, the vein pursuit of money, and the perpetuation of hood life. Its dumb nigger music.

>> No.15390127

>>15390049
>Most people don't read every day though
Yeah, that's what the study seems to say

>> No.15390362

>>15390035
The photo is by Jean-Christophe Ballot. But he is mooching off the style and composition techniques of Candida Hofer(who is from Düsseldorf school of photography).

>> No.15390410

>>15389871
It is inefficient only for the information that can fully be transmitted through sound and image - simple, fictional plots. Writing is not an inefficient way of transmitting philosophy because it is the only way of transmitting philosophy.
The issue is our contemporary sentimentalism. The excitability and craving for excitement. It drinks our life-blood.

>> No.15390416

>>15389991
You are right but most people can't read non fiction so they watch youtube videos instead

>> No.15390418

>>15389991
False. I’ve listened to authors explain their ideas on a podcast or elsewhere and then when I go to read their book it turns out there is not much new information, they had told me all I needed to know on the podcast. The only difference is that, on the podcast, they skipped the “filler” part that is necessary to increase the length of the book and get it published.

>> No.15390450

>>15390418
That speaks more of what you read than anything else.

>> No.15390457

>>15389825
the likely future is a total fusion of social media, cinema, and television into a unified form revolving around video streams infested with ads and sponsored content which becomes the dominant media form. reading becomes a specialized skill. the future majority will communicate primarily in memes and emojis while speaking a creole composed of english, spanish, french, and chinese

>> No.15390463

>>15390457
Hey, that is not a fair prediction, half of it is just description of what is already true.

>> No.15390466

>>15390410
i think it's a big lack of imagination to think that the only way to transmit philosophy is through writing. for starters, a substantial amount of philosophy was strictly oral (pythagoras, pre-socratics, etc). just because there have been few attempts to seriously philosophize via cinema doesn't mean it's impossible

>> No.15390467

>>15390450
I was specifically referring to Edward Snowden's newest book. From listening to the man talk on various online podcasts and shows, I found out all there was to know, really. Reading his book was a tedious experience just because I had heard everything in it before. Of course there was some new stuff, but this was unimportant information.

>> No.15390469

>>15390463
i always imagine the future as being the worst elements of the present with the volume turned to 11

>> No.15390475

>>15390467
snowden isn't a writer or a philosopher. he's a STEM autist and it shouldn't be a surprise that his book would read like STEM autism (even with a ghost writer)

>> No.15390480

>>15390466
You are always going to miss the breadth of a message in it's full applications if you do not read it in some written language.

>> No.15390500
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15390500

I don't get why people lament the fact that reading isn't a mainstream hobby anymore when it never was everyone's hobby. In the past only people with a shred of curiosity, or a middle-high/high social status and an academic background used to read, while the idea of opening a book wouldn't even cross the minds of the illiterate masses, which today are analogous to the multitudes that mindlessly consume movies and poorly written entertainment offered by pop-culture. We've just replaced illiteracy with functional illiteracy and the poor man's entertainment with pop culture, but the targets have remained pretty much the same.

>> No.15390506

>>15390467
Well, that is basically what I said. If the contents of the book can be represented in such a way, it is a worthless book. But not all books are worthless.

>> No.15390528

>>15390500
reading was the dominant mass media experience from the english civil war up until the advent of cinema in anglophone nations

>> No.15390534

>>15390528
How could there have been a mass media when the masses were largely illiterate?

>> No.15390550
File: 1.14 MB, 3240x2290, How to Read a Book.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15390550

>>15390506
The average person isn't reading highbrow philosophical literature though. If we're talking about reading as it concerns the masses we have to talk about books that the average person would likely be interested in -- "midwit" literature, in /lit/'s terms. This type of literature can just as easily be explained in a documentary, a podcast, a videoseries, an online lecture, or sometimes even an infographic, as it can in a book. The only difference is that the book takes much more effort and time than any other medium. Seriously, why would I spend my time reading 400+ pages of How to Read a Book when I can just look at pic related?
So no, reading will never be a popular hobby among the masses because it is an inefficient medium for what the masses like to consume.

>> No.15390579

>>15390528

Yeah and people were still largely stupid and tasteless. Most of the greats tanked career wise in their lifetime.

>> No.15390610

>>15390528
Yeah. Illiterate peasant sure loved reading the Greeks.

>> No.15390615

>>15390550
Because not everyone is a bugman whose exclusive source of knowledge is a pile of soulless charts which outline someone's books without expanding on the subject or providing further insights on it. The only kind of people who genuinely value charts over actual books are lazy college dimwits who want to have every academic subject outlined and laid on a silver platter to avoid trudging through a book and come up with conlusions on their own, and most of these people will end up forgetting these very charts the moment they'll get a shiny passing grade to increase their GPA. Also by forcing you to make extra efforts, books encourage you to make use of your associative memory and are more likely to help you retain information than charts.

>> No.15390750

>>15390615
>whole bunch of non-sequiturs

>> No.15390765

>>15390750
>not a single refuting argument

>> No.15390782

Books were always something for the elite.
Plebs always prefered, theater, going to church, sports, etc. When they had spare time, that is.

>> No.15390848

>>15390782
>sports
>not elite
19th century factory workers didn't have much leisure, anon. Sports as a form of entertainment for the masses is a recent phenomenon.

>> No.15390868

>>15389871
I find Documentaries often do a better job of explaining concepts, and do so in a fraction of the time it would take to read a book. Documentaries are also beneficial in that you can talk about them with a wider demographic of people, where as discussing a specialty non-fiction book on post-enlightenment france will probably just get you a glazed over stare. However A documentary on the same subject would likely be able to use the medium of sound and image to entrance the viewer into absorbing the critical points of that particular history.

That said, I was reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln recently and I was so utterly impressed by the writing ability of the Biographer, and how he was capable of artfully reconstructing not only the events, but a very particular sentiment of feeling that always seemed tasteful and appropriate. I could only describe the writing style as cinematic in it's detail and romanticism. Considering the book was a number of anecdotes and stories related to Lincoln, I imagine that it would be very difficult to adapt to the screen, as the author constantly switches to his own narration, to direct quotes from Abraham Lincoln. It's so fascinating to see how people thought before the advent of radio and television, memory played a critical role in culture, and people seemed to have had a profound ability to recall exact details of events, because preserving history depended almost entirely on this mental faculty.

In other words what I am trying to say is that literature is more or less a dead genre. I think language, and human understanding / thinking is evolving into a more image based style of communication. Images themselves are much more detailed than script, and you can absorb lots of information from pictures that you can't absorb from a description. That being said, something is certainly lost when we no longer have to interpret and decipher text in order to gain understanding. I would say what is lost at the end of the day is the exercise of the imagination.

>> No.15392249

Our only hope is that the virus will mutate and kill more than 70% of the global population, right now that seems like it's not going to happen

>> No.15392259

>>15389828
This, unless you are making a qualifier that most people do not read full blown narritive books. people read all the time. But then there is a difference between reading and what you are reading.

>> No.15392260

>>15390750
behold, the autistic vermin shrieking in fear

>> No.15392342

It’ll probably never be central and expected the way it once was in many western cultures. That said, yes, it’s sad that so few people read or enjoy reading, but it not being the most important thing in “culture” doesn’t kill me. As others have said, when books were popular media, the general population wasn’t as interested in what many think of as great works. You’re screwed either way.

Although it would be nice if reading wasn’t always considered an intellectual pursuit. I can’t tell you how many times some one has assumed I’m an academic because I’m reading something that’s not John Green while out and about.

>> No.15392426
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15392426

Most books (95% or more) are simply unreadably bad, and intended that way. Authors have publishing contracts that typically include bunch of books in a certain time frame that
forces everybody to publish complete crap. It's
simply way too hard to find anything that is not utter shit. Both fiction and non-fiction are this
way now. Because so few are good and worth reading result is that Books are not very good form of entertainment in general

>> No.15392910

There is no incentive for being a scholar in the new world. The only incentive they give you is to be a specialized cog in the big capitalist machine.

>> No.15392980

>>15389825
Not sure, but possibly the UBI could make people read more. Also post Capitalism (around mid 21st century), people will work less and have more time to read. It will never be 50% of the population, but having something like 1-2% of the general population having read Hegel is not impossible.

>> No.15393024

>>15390467
By reading, you fix knowledge more, you have some kind of transcendental experience. You are impregnated with knowledge, more than watching a video. You almost always go further by reading than by watching a video. Comparing videos and books, is like comparing body-pump and hardcore bodybuilding.

>> No.15393086

>>15390500
What I think to be the problem is when even the middle-high/high social status people prefer watching avengers to read a pulp novel.

>> No.15393106

The less people read the less intellectual competition there is.

>> No.15393116

>>15393106
>anon publishes the new best American novel
>no one reads it

>> No.15393506

>>15390053
I was impressed. racism is an unironic virtue

>> No.15394656

>>15390362
interesting. I'm completely ignorant when it comes to photography

>> No.15394678

>>15393116
Good, I only write for God

>> No.15394722

>>15390053
What impresses men is different from what impresses slaves.

>> No.15394959

>>15390053
Rap is absolute dogshit and the culture around it has a negative influence on kids who buy into it being 'cool'. Blacks have had a huge influence on many good genres of modern music, though.