August 06, 2008
A Second Life for literature
From The Guardian:
Since we all became globally-connected, various attempts have been made at changing how we read. Consider hypertext fiction, such as Geoff Ryman's 253 and the new concept of the "wovel", as discussed here a few weeks ago. Now, there's another injection of technology into reading, through the virtual worlds of Second Life. "What if, in addition to reading a book, we could actually visit the locations we read about?" ask the creators of Literature Alive! an academic project which encourages teaching online. I'm not a Second Life user. I've visited once or twice out of curiosity, back when it was touted as the future of the internet. But since reality set in, I've kept my distance. Still, I was intrigued by the thought of wandering through Dante's Inferno, Edgar Allen Poe's house and Alice 's Looking Glass ("Peering around the bend you see ... Hmmm what do you see? Your curiosity overwhelms you and you .... you ...")
The locations are certainly impressive, if somewhat bewildering, and a great deal of work is evident. Some random clicking brings up explanatory videos, notes, and the work itself. To further explore the idea of literature online, a conference was held yesterday (to be repeated tomorrow). With an emphasis on academic use, Beth Ritter-Guth or, as she is in Second Life, Desideria Stockton, delivered the keynote address. Essentially her argument comes down to the issue of active rather than passive learning and she insisted students' work was marked as rigorously as any other academic work.
More here.
Posted by Azra Raza at 05:43 AM | Permalink
Comments
As if reading were not enough.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Aug 6, 2008 9:55:23 AM
The problem is not that reading is not enough, but that there is not enough reading.
Posted by: Jared | Aug 6, 2008 12:14:08 PM
I agree with Elatia. When it comes to reading fiction, more is not more. The work is the work. Adding "reality" to it subtracts. As if, were the writer to cram ever more realistic detail into his or her work, it could only improve. The things unsaid are often just as important as the things said.
Posted by: Jeff | Aug 6, 2008 2:12:16 PM
"What if, in addition to reading a book, we could actually visit the locations we read about?"
What if, instead of merely scanning a book for plot points and info deposits, we learned to read fiction carefully, with avid attention to nuance and a fully-activated imagination? They could do it in the 19th century; why can't we do it now?
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Aug 6, 2008 2:49:55 PM
"What if, in addition to reading a book, we could actually visit the locations we read about?"
... because sometimes the reality is not as wonderful as the imagination. AND having things shown one isn't nearly as exciting as creating worlds in one's mind.
Posted by: reader | Aug 6, 2008 4:33:09 PM
Seems like an interesting idea in the spirit of movies based on books and plays. Don't know if it'll catch on, but if it does, why not?
Posted by: D | Aug 6, 2008 4:52:35 PM
Jared, Jeff, Steven and reader -- this is a lot of agreement, so maybe we're onto something. D, it may be that in a spirit of "Why not?" this idea could catch on -- probably there's someone earnest in there somewhere who thinks this idea could shoe-horn non-readers into plain old literature. But then, no one ever liked TV so much they decided to go back to radio for a bit of "the real thing," so I don't sense a two-way street between seminal text and new media being paved. What we have here, I do believe, is a case of smart people, without any kind of foresight but the commercial, working cleverly to make the rest of us dumber.
All of us still read, so we know it's important. What exactly are the defenses against this kind of manipulation that could be mounted by people too young to know they should read with pleasure? Those kids won't have a moment's anxiety that Balzac will turn into clay tablets in museum vitrines before they're dead, will they? In the raft of articles published since his death about Solzhenitsyn was one that suggested how in the Gulag he maintained contact with the written word. By writing on scraps or on walls, was one way. By thinking and memorizing his words, to write them much, much later was another. We should be very careful not to let children lose contact with their imaginations -- they may one day have to exercise them with the slenderest of means.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Aug 6, 2008 8:17:24 PM
As Marshall McLuhan so clearly pointed out, the medium is as (if not more) as important as the content.
Entirely different experiences, a computer screen, and reading of a book, as any of us who cherish the written word know..
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Aug 7, 2008 12:02:22 AM
Hmm...here's an empirical question I don't know the answer to, but I'd be prepared to bet one way rather than the other:
Do Kenneth Branagh Hamlets, Kurosawa's adaptations, West Side Story, the several Orson Welles films and just plain Shakespeare in Love cause upticks in sales of nicely annotated copies of The Tempest or does the orgiastic visual medium displace, even do away with the text?
Okay, so Shakespeare is meant to be performed not just read, so that's a bit of a trick. Still, don't periodic Pride and Prejudice flicks renew interest in Austen? Am I really to take for granted that someone who comes across a virtual House of the Usher will use that experience to substitute for reading Poe just as the Peter Jackson films put an end to interest in Tolkien (oh wait)?
Posted by: D | Aug 7, 2008 3:36:08 AM
"Do Kenneth Branagh Hamlets, Kurosawa's adaptations, West Side Story, the several Orson Welles films and just plain Shakespeare in Love cause upticks in sales of nicely annotated copies of The Tempest or does the orgiastic visual medium displace, even do away with the text?"
But, D, your analogy is drawn from an old model in which reading was the everyday default and movies (even with the advent of VCRs) could only be delivered in a fixed location (and were, therefore, more or less special events). As technology erodes the *practical* advantages of reading a paperback, while magnifying the sensual overkill of saturated, fast-paced images that go boom in your earbuds, what's to protect reading (and the imagination it requires) from atrophying into a specialist activity in an arcane field for future Retroists?
It's not that I'm not passing around a petition or anything (what could we sign against?)... I'm just saying that the old models for assessing change will provide false comfort. The historical fault line is pre/post microchip. Gutenberg is way on the *other* side of the divider, at this point.
And, surely, the option of making a virtual visit to one of the motel rooms described in "Lolita" would not only be literal-mindedly beside the point but a violation of Nabokov's artistic prerogative to guide the rhythm, direction and intensity of the mind's gaze through the space of his creation?
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Aug 7, 2008 10:22:14 AM
"It's not that I'm not passing around a petition..."
Ha ha! Freudian slippage. Remove a "not" from that.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Aug 7, 2008 10:24:58 AM
One should "shun the frumious Bandersnatch" but above all one should shun any image of it that doesn't start within your imagination (with your memories, your associations and yes, I guess, any other attempts to depict this creature that you may have encountered). Literature happens in the mind of the reader. The visuals are just a part of it and illustrating them can only give you a map not the territory.
I'm not saying,"Make no graven images." But it's useful to think about why such a rule would ever sound like a plausible commandment. The merely retinal can be quite very seductive but Homer and Milton where blind so what gives?
D:
Interesting question. I feel sorry for kids that come to The Lord of the Rings after they see the movie. How many will be able to bring their own personal imagery to it? Sadder yet, how many have any contact with woods, rivers and fields sufficient to landscape their own version of Middle Earth? Without that engagement what is one left with? A long winded, slightly tedious and unevenly plotted epic by a talented amateur which leaned heavily on description to carry it along. Standardizing it's imagery with lush art direction and special effects really hurts this very vulnerable work.
I'm glad that I started reading Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey novels before Master and Commander was released. It's taken years but I'm glad to say that I don't automatically imagine Russell Crowe as Jack when I'm reading them but I'm having a harder time shaking Paul Bettany's Stephen Maturin but that's because he came up with aspects of that character that weren't obvious to the eye but worked so well with the dialogue. Having said that, Bettany's image of a good, studious ship's surgeon works for that film but what about Maturin's other sides as a spy and rejected lover? Well, that's not there because it's not in the script. There are no definitive interpretations for any well written work but the "Big Media" versions are hard to get around and very hard if you don't have alternative models in one's imagination.
The interesting thing about Dante's Inferno isn't just its spiral layout and all of that eternal,pained wailing; its the values that the scheme contains. Who'd of of thought of consigning con men to a lower rung than murderers?
Posted by: Pete Chapman | Aug 7, 2008 2:10:25 PM
Pete -
Okay. I will merely push back against a rigid dismissal of visual representation, eschewing for example the suggestion that Botticelli ruined Dante for everyone by illustrating the Divine Comedy, circles of hell, fascinating values and all
Steven -
This seems like a separate issue to what we’ve been discussing, but your objection leaves me genuinely puzzled. Since when have artists had such rights? Did Nabokov have a right against Kubrick that his artistic vision be respected? More pointedly, did Anthony Burgess? Arthur C. Clarke? Should not Wide Sargasso Sea have been written without clearance from the Charlotte Bronte estate?
Posted by: D | Aug 7, 2008 2:49:35 PM
Very amusing, everybody. See how well we do when we're discarnate entities in charge of no more than the written word? With no need for any prompt but text?
The intellectual property angle is interesting. You want something to remain your intellectual property forever? Then you don't tell a soul about it. Otherwise, transgressions will occur.
I don't really think it's about intellectual property or about developing the classics of literature from an "inviolate" state to a form marketable to a wider audience, however. I think it's about being able to start a fire with the sun and a glass, or having to wait 'til somebody brings you a lighter. No one would suggest a calculator was a replacement for the ability to do sums -- only a faster and easier way to do them. Yet people who used to do sums with ease are now reliant on their calculators, and no one wants to go back. Gadgetry that is altogether too charming and seductive disconnects us from our core competencies, and unfits us for survival.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Aug 7, 2008 3:39:14 PM
"Did Nabokov have a right against Kubrick that his artistic vision be respected?"
Different frames, D, old chum. Kubrick's Lolita isn't presented as a technical *enhancement* of Nabokov's book (to be used *while reading it*), unless I'm missing something... or you have the most interesting reading/viewing habits I've ever encountered.
Elatia:
Velcro has rendered me unable to operate the *Converse All-Stars* I keep in a bell jar in my virtual weight room! In fact, I'm not entirely sure that my thumbs are still...uh... (what's the word?)...
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Aug 7, 2008 4:01:06 PM
D:
Sorry if that came off as a call to iconoclasm. Hey, I like pictures. Botticelli's take on Dante and Blake's, and Dore's and Peter Greenaway's (he once did a pilot for a T.V. series of the Divine Comedy); it's fine by me. I'm just pushing at the idea of large scale and immersive representations swamping the quieter aspects of our relations to art and literature and our relations to our own memories and imagination. Great art inspires more art; no question there but in all this give and take, one has consider what is given and what was taken. I wonder even about the losses that modern media face; people that can't watch a black and white film, read subtitles, or follow a silent movie. If film disappears how will we know what video looks like?
Posted by: Pete Chapman | Aug 7, 2008 4:35:29 PM
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