Recently a woman from the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote an article about New Media taking over for Classical Literature. This truly makes me sad. Can it be that the book is "outdated" now? I can't even image a world without books.
Books are something you can curl up with. They provide an experience. All readers know the feeling of sitting down with a book, embrassing the cover, and turning the pages. There is something special about reading the lines and creating the story in your own mind. A book takes the reader inside the story. An author can write a description which the reader can take and make their own. Setting, character traits, attitudes are all at the reader's disposal. And because of this aspect a book can affect a reader on so many levels. The article from the Cincinnati Enquirer suggests the desirable effects of new media. But things like YouTube and Halo 3 are simply too flat to achieve the status that books have. Can a YouTube video take you into a story? Can you visualize the characters in the way you choose while watching a movie? Video games give you slightly more freedom, but ultimately you can only travel on one path through the game. Literature is not watching and listening, it's feeling and becoming a part of what is going on.
Books are something that new media could never replace. With a book or a poem there is interpretation. What did the writer mean? Are there any deeper meanings? While these questions can also be asked with new media, there are too many distractions that accompany them. Think, would you really question the symbolism in a YouTube video? Or if you did, how long would you think about it before proceeding to check your myspace or getting angry at pop up advertising?
At the end of the article the writer suggests that parents sit down and create a YouTube video with their kids to become part of the new media trend. This is a terrible idea. This means kids will become accustomed to the YouTube craze. Instead of writing their great ideas in poetry or song they'll make some stupid video that people will watch. But whose to say that that poem wouldn't have been a classic? Twenty years from now will people be talking about that one YouTube video?
Literature is dying, which is a sad fact. We can wave goodbye to classical literature.
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