Taken from essays in the GP publication :Reading: the Future
Stephen MatthewsWESTERN SOCIETY'S THIRST FOR EASE AND COMFORT is insatiable. Every innovation which minimises effort is leapt upon, not always with respect for social and environmental costs.
Cars are automatically-geared, air-conditioned, full of devices to save even the effort of winding windows. Unaware of the strain such comforts may cause on natural resources (unless we exert ourselves to find out), we expend scarcely any personal effort on traversing huge distances, where our ancestors who had to walk knew exactly how much energy their travel needed. Living in comfortable homes where clean water is a tap's turn away, we need give no thought to what sustains the supply, where our forebears knew precisely how much effort was needed to get water (and therefore used it more carefully). Even in pursuit of pleasure we welcome less effort. We love the technology which brings the sound of huge orchestras into our living rooms. We expect to see all kinds of cultural display at the touch of a remote control.
Most adults have at least known a time when effort was unavoidable (and satisfying when successfully exercised). But now, cowed by a Freudian-induced fear that tender psyches may be damaged by the effort of meeting high expectations, we prefer to absolve our children from the hard work which learning entails. So, in their reading, we give entertainment priority over enlightenment, countenancing simplified style and vocabulary, and embracing a proliferation of series, sequels and television tie-ins.
Reading will be easier, we're convinced, and therefore more widely engaged in, if settings are recognisable, style is familiar, vocabulary is vernacular, if characters and milieux have already been established and if there's an emphasis on easy visual content. (It's trends I'm discussing here. I'm not ignoring the fact that some exceptional books use pictures to attract readers to worthwhile stories. But, too often, lavish illustration is used to mask weaknesses in the accompanying text.)
The makers of `interactive' CD-ROMs and arrogantly labelled `living' books would like us to forget that old-fashioned books are the most interactive devices ever conceived: readers create their own mental pictures, shape their own reactions, themselves give life to characters, set their own pace, define their own meanings, bring their own insights to bear - and all, miraculously, out of inert squiggles on lifeless paper.
Yet some publishers seem to be on the verge of losing faith in books, not only as a means of making money but, worse, as a vehicle for complex ideas.
ABR, May 1995
Copyright © 1997 by Ginninderra Press. All rights reserved.
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