The Era of the Written Word is Over, Dead
August 2nd, 2007And so too is America…
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Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson
The era of the writer and the written word is over. Deader than dead.
And of course the American Century is long over, along with the ideal of what America could be, which is about as dead as Rome on the verge of its burning.
I am just now coming to the full realization of these facts, having finished reading New York Days by Willie Morris.
That is not to say that newspapers, magazines and books won’t be published a few years longer, or that U.S. politicians won’t get on the stump and try to convince us that “a new day is dawning in this city on a hill” or some such blather.
Publishing on ink and paper will go on awhile longer, maybe another 13 years or so. And with all the writing schools out there making money teaching writing, thousands of people will still try to learn how to write - for the dwindling audience that still gives a damn.
Oh, we will still get a Harry Potter series now and then, which the money people love, because it is a totally created world based on the idea that magic is real. There is no such thing as magic, people, or ghosts or vampires or zombies. But that won’t keep the movies and TV shows about them from being churned out and the little people following with their dollar bills, like a frontier mom to a snake oil salesman.
In reading Morris’s final memoir, I am struck most of all by how similar the world he describes is to the one today, with only one notable exception. Then, that is the 1960s, people were out in the streets protesting the Vietnam War and the slide of America into two classes of people, the rich and the poor, and for Civil Rights.
Now no one protests much. We just take it lying down.
I had never heard of Steve Erickson until reading New York Days, but when I read what he wrote about the American psyche circa 1970, I was left almost dumbfounded. I had to stop and read it again, for it is right out of conversations I’ve had in recent days with a few fellow travelers who also lament the “end times” we live in for intellectual thought, good writing and progressive politics.
“The American psyche of 1970 seemed split between those who hated and loved America simply - those who questioned everything about it, even what was good and reasonable; and those who served its authority and rules so blindly that not only their imaginations but their common sense became paralyzed.”
It is possible that America was as divided then as it was in the 2004 election cycle? Is our TV media culture so bereft of any knowledge of history that the red state-blue state divide is not such a new and saucy story after all?
Is it possible that even then, when the number of media outlets made it possible for a shared experience on the part of most Americans - who read a handful of magazines and watched the same TV shows - the divide was already there?
David Halberstam, a regular contributor to the Willie Morris Harper’s, wrote then: “We spoke in the same language, but we understood nothing that the other (side) said.”
That is clearly true today, and must be more so, for the further we are removed from the historical lexicon of the written word, the further apart our experiences grow.
I have a stupid girl e-mailing me anonymously these days under the name GOPGIRL@blahblah.com.
She doesn’t realize that she is stupid and uneducated and has no sense of history, and somehow for her, and thousands like her, the only written word they see are published on partisan blogs and sent around via e-mail. And since her tiny little peer group of people somewhere in the boonies of Alabama still stand by there man Lil Bush, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that his is the worse presidency in the history of the Republic by far, only goes to show just how far we are removed from anything resembling truth.
There is no truth to be found in America today; no justice either. We would all be better off just to throw ourselves on the mercy of the King Bush appointed courts, I guess, and hope they don’t indict us and shackle us all like they did Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy.
Or, saying fuck that, if we cannot raise enough of a fight in the Washington Democrats or the protest movement, we may as well all pack up and move to snowy Canada or sunny New Zealand and let China go ahead and bomb this place into annihilation once and for all.
They control all our borrowed money now anyway, and they could pull the plug at any moment.
This will not convince GOPGirl or any of her ilk. It will take more collapsed bridges like the one in Minneapolis, perhaps with her trapped under it, for the realization to set in that America is dead. Caput. No longer viable.
I wish I could say it were not true and that there was still some hope. But at this moment I don’t see any.
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| Photo by Glynn Wilson |
| You can sit and smoke with a stoned William Faulkner in front of the Oxford, Mississippi, City Hall. I wonder what he would think about the death of writing and America? Would he still deny the doom of man? |
In his day, William Faulkner said, upon his acceptance of the Nobel prize for literature and in the days when all-out nuclear war seemed a real threat, “I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.”
But that was in the days when a writer had to tell the money people what they wanted to hear since no one likes or funds a pessimist.
For the American left, which has failed again, 2007 is much like 1967.
As Hunter S. Thompson, writing from Haite-Ashbury, said then: “The thrust is no longer for ‘change’ or ‘progress’ or ‘revolution,’ but merely to escape, to live on the far perimeter of a world that might have been - perhaps should have been - and strike a bargain for survival on purely personal terms.”
Since this story has already been written, what’s the point of writing it again? And since some of my writer friends even say these blog columns are too long, what’s the point of going on and on?
If you can still read, and really like doing it, get thee to a library - before they burn all the books and turn it into a cyber café complete with a Starbucks coffee stand.
Pretty soon, the Bush royal family will abolish government altogether and privatize everything. And when they do, there will be no place for democracy or the written word - with the possible exception of the press release. What would Karl Rove and Bill Canary and the federal courts and the chain newspapers do without the press release?
I wonder how the Chinese feel about the press release? How do you write a press release in morphemes?
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| Photo by Glynn Wilson |
| The room of a real writer in the heyday of writing, William Faulkner’s office at Rowan Oak in Oxford, Mississippi, when the writing instrument of choice was the manual typewriter. I still have one, for when the power grid goes down and the Internet stops flickering and cell phone towers stand mute in the pastures. Maybe I’ll start an old fashioned journal and print it on a manual press and pass it around by hand. |
Tags: Book Reviews
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:45 am
Steve Erickson is great. I was reading Days Between Stations and Tours of the Black Clock when I was living in Glasgow in the early 90s.
Malcolm Lawrence
malcolm@towerofbabel.com
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:13 am
It’s not just the written word that’s gone, it’s a way of life. At one time I would have never believed that the Feds would cover up for China as they import poisonous food and drugs into this country. It seems that our Federal watchdogs that are supposed to protect “The People” from terrorist attacks, cheap goods and services, price gouging at all levels have sold out to $$$ and power.
I have to take 4 prescription drugs a day for my heart condition that cost over $160 each per month. I do have insurance which covers all but $30 each but Hell, my insurance costs $885 per month so that’s really no help. There is no real justice in our system anymore but there are plenty of political prisoners. Case in point, Don Siegleman, all he did was keep all his campaign promises except for the lottery which he at least brought before “The People”.
If a politician can be jailed for taking a campaign contribution and appointing said contributor to a State board or post then our jails should be full of politicians. Hey, that wouldn’t be a bad idea, especially the Federal boys who just can’t wait to put harmless citizens in jail and release traitors like Oliver North or pardon people like Scooter Libby. Of course Scooter was just the fall guy for Cheney in the coverup of the Plame outing.
We really have regressed since the 1990’s when the only bad thing you could say about the President was that he was a little oversexed.
Well, the sex we’re getting from this administration ig going right up our asses. These arrogant bastards started a war just so they would have an excuse to grab money and profiteer. It just amazes me that a lot of “The People” still think we shoud stay the course in Iraq. It was a lot better here when we were isolationist and did’t try to force “OUR WAY OF LIFE” on countries and people who don’t understand it or want it.
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Glynn,
I, unfortunately, wholeheartedly agree.
Such a time, the venerable 21st century, when grand words, tomes of literature and profound conversations dwindle to insignificant spats of thought and sputtering logic; the Eros of Knowledge, Intellect, and Soul succumb to the Age of Conceit.
Tough times … indeed … for the few romantics of the Word.
I was born 80 years too late, but I will endeavor to find solace upon the page, even if I am the only one reading or writing the script.
S. McConnell
Foley, Alabama
August 5th, 2007 at 12:20 am
Dear Glynn,
I am Margaret Miller’s husband, an identification I seem to be using with increasing frequency. She has told me of some of your laments, particularly that of the fate of the written word. I told her to send you a message of hope and in her typically supportive fashion, she said, “Do it yourself.” Some form of this conversation is common at our house, and it usually ends there. Either to curry favor, or because I actually wanted to, though, this time I said, “OK.”
A little context for my opinion. I am a Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama and (probably still) an adjunct Professor of Public Health at UAB. What I actually did, or taught at these august institutions is too bizarre and varied to describe, but suffice it to say that little of it had to do with writing. There were two semesters in which I tried to teach a graduate course in technical writing, but its popularity was limited. However, I have spent my life, since teen years, writing a wide variety of things, and, at one time even co-edited, co-published, and wrote about 30% of a magazine that lasted two issues. It was a loss of interest and interference from other demands that killed it. I actually might have lived in more dedicated hands. Most of the rest of my life, until 12 years ago was dedicated to education, on both sides of the lectern. Both Margaret and I enjoyed being students and collecting degrees, so we did. I enjoyed getting degrees from an institution at which I was a full professor and my teachers were not. Margaret was always a serious student.
OK, so I wrote professional papers, edited journals, and occasionally dabbled in other forms of written expression until 12 years ago when I left the academy. Now, while engaging in a part time private practice (psychotherapy, to supply Margaret with building materials, but I’m falling behind her efforts), I decided that I would spend the rest of my time returning to an old love, writing,; writing what I wanted to, not what a University wanted me to. And so I have, in paper and electronic form. I write for a national magazine (which will remain unnamed) and several small pay electronic sites. I am, of course, also writing a novel; isn’t everybody? I have written about everything from reviewing home medical devices to a series on grammar and punctuation to poetry. It would be more than hard to live on this income, but it’s fun. My point?
Writing is far from dead. It is far from dead in paper form. Yes, it is changing; yes some of the paper world has been permanently usurped by the electronic, but no form is dead, or will be in the foreseeable future. In fact opportunities to write, and be read, have burgeoned greatly in the electronic world and not diminished nearly as much in the so called “hard copy” world. Quality is, of course, compromised, but it has been going down for so long that I’m not sure that this increased interest in electronic writing might not result in an eventual improvement. I don’t believe that paper publishing will be dead in ten, twenty, or thirty years. I’m not altogether sure that it won’t improve. You are probably not old enough to remember the certainty that movie theaters would disappear. It was only logical. Why would there be any demand for them? Look around.
So, as Margaret said, keep writing. I am.
Howard
August 5th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Howard,
Thanks for the note.
I am obviously being overly dramatic ala. Hunter S. Thompson in what I wrote in that column.
But I think there is a valid point, and it is that most people no longer read - except old people with lots of degrees : )
And, just because you put some words down on paper or electronically doesn’t mean they hold up to the quality of the writers of old.
I could have gone on to explain that what I meant was there are no Faulkner’s anymore, no Robert Penn Warren’s or Walker Percy’s or even Willie Morris’s.
Writing is different now. It has to be shorter and more explicit, no matter what the form.
Maybe in some ways that is a good thing, but I still write long sentences and use big words sometimes, hoping that there are readers out there who are willing to take in the writing and curious enough to look up the words they don’t know.
Read New York Days, the book that inspired the column. Gee-jus, I had to mark words to look up. That doesn’t happen so much anymore. That’s what I did when I was young and learning to read at a college level - and to write.
I don’t really see much of that curiosity anymore, but maybe it’s out there somewhere.
As for newspapers? Forget it. They are losing circulation precisely because they are not LIBERAL anymore and are written in this new PR style written for the church crowd and ninth graders and, for all I know, illegal immigrants.
I am infinitely familiar with the academic literature on newspapers, radio, TV, the Net, etc., since I have a Master’s from Alabama and worked on a Ph.D. at Tennessee and taught at both places, plus tenure track at Loyola New Orleans. I contributed to that literature.
But I fell in love with online publishing 11 years ago, including the first online magazine of its kind, The Southerner, at Southerner.net.
We put up a blog at that domain last year, but the experimental magazine archives are still up.
We actually came close to getting venture capital, but the dot com bubble burst.
Anyway, thanks again for the note, and I hope you enjoy reading some of my blather. As I said in the cutline on the Faulkner office photo, when the power grid goes down and the Net flickers out and the cell phone towers too, like during the aftermath of Katrina, I’ll still be writing on a manual typewriter if necessary and printing it out somehow for some kind of an audience, however limited.
August 6th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Perhaps one or two Roman pundits made the same observation in 476 C.E. when Odacer’s Germanic hordes were moving into their new digs in Rome. And the era of the written word was, in fact, pretty much over in Western Europe, save for those written by a tiny group of ecclesiastics, for several centuries to come.
But the written word had survived over four centuries of the autocracy Octavian set up on the ruins of the old Republic, and actually thrived in many ways, albeit not as a safe forum for discussion of political ideas, unless they were heavily disguised.
The humane arts and letters typically go underground in times of political and cultural repression or atrophy. This writer is not ready to join Glynn yet at the wake, nor is ready to tie the death of the written word directly to the failure of 20th century leftist politics.
But it is a safe to say that much of what passes for art and culture today is as at least as depressing as Glynn opines, if not more.
August 9th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
This is the kind of discussion that should be encouraged in blog comments sections, not the blogity blah blog bs normally associated with anonymous blogs. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to comment on these columns. We may be moving into Word Press soon, which will make it easier to comment. We just hope the level of dialogue will stay high…