Early in the European
occupation of America, indigenous peoples’ opinions on the value of the written
word divided into two camps. To some it was little short of magic, while
others, when they understood what was going on with reading and writing, saw
the written word as compensation for the white race’s poor memory, a kind of
interpersonal and historical crutch. Maybe it is a crutch. After all, no single
person can hold in her head all the knowledge, all the science, history,
poetry, and drama of the world’s books.
Yet as far as I know, humans
have never attributed intelligence to the objects we call books. We see
clearly and accurately that the written word is a means of storage and
conveyance, dependant on writers and thinkers and researchers and creators at
points of origin and on receptive, discerning, comprehending, critical minds at
the other end. Without the critical function of intelligence in reading, readers would be nothing but “smart,” preening parrots.
Oh-oh. I see a long road
unfurling before me here, the first steps taken in the paragraphs above, but
I’m a couple days into a winter cold and not feeling energetic enough for a
long journey. No one will mind, I’m sure, if I simply share a couple of
anecdotes?
In my first year of graduate
study in philosophy, a post-doctoral fellow said of someone she’d been in
school with, “At first I thought he was really smart, and then I realized he
was just counterexample smart.” Counterexample smart! That phrase captured so
much! The counterexample smart student never saw the virtues of another’s
position, never contributed to building its strength or complexity, but neither did he
ever fault the position in a thoughtful way, and never did he remain a silent
listener, leaving the argument to others. No, he always leapt into the fray,
and his refutations invariably took the form of coming up with a counterexample,
no matter how outlandish or obscure. It was the only arrow he ever had in his
quiver. A counterexample can be an important, serious objection to an argument, and strengthening an argument often has to do with making it impervious to counterexamples. But there is so much more to thinking and arguing and philosophy!
My other anecdote concerns a small event that took place in my bookstore, part of a conversation I was
having with a very smart, very educated friend, who is also a strong supporter
of my bookstore, i.e., he buys books from me on a regular basis. All this I say
to make clear that the improvised contest that popped up between us one day had
nothing in it but curiosity and good nature.
We were recalling one of
Ogden Nash’s silly poems, “Very Like a Whale,” and talking of metaphor and
simile in general, when it suddenly became very important to me to remember the
name of the poet Nash was lampooning. “The Assyrian... purple and gold.” Who
was it?
My friend snapped his
fingers. “Just a minute! I can tell you!”
He pulled out his cell phone, telling me that he had recently downloaded a new app that would answer the
question. While his fingers repeatedly swiped the tiny screen, I went to the poetry section of my bookstore and pulled an anthology from the shelves.
The race was on!
The chronology of the first
anthology ended too soon. I pulled down a second book, which had an index of
first lines. Excellent! But oh, no! Whoever alphabetized the list had included
the initial words “A,” “An,” and “The” in the list! My friend’s fingers were
still swiping, as mine scrolled, so to speak, down the page, through all first
lines beginning with “The.” There it was! With a page number! I flipped to the
page, and voilà!
“Lord Byron!” I called out in
triumph. Then, joyously, I added, “Book beats app! Book beats app!”
My
best-beloved technology, the printed word bound into books, had been challenged
and had met the test. My friend remained
good-natured in the face of the book’s victory. If by chance he reads this,
I’ll bet he even laughs out loud.
Okay, in general, most of the
time, the app (how I hate that word!) would probably be faster – provided, that is, the answer to the questioned posed has
somewhere, somehow, by someone,
been uploaded to the world-wide web. There’s an
awful lot “out there,” but it’s not true that “Everything is out there.” For example, one year I was interviewed by Fine
Books and Collections magazine, and the interview appeared in print, but it is nowhere online. There is a
lot of genealogy and local history online -- and there’s a lot that isn’t there,
too.
More and more I feel like a
character in a fantasy novel (an old, eccentric character in an odd, hidden-away corner of the world) as I think of all
the “knowledge” stored in “clouds” and wonder what would happen if these clouds
were to be dispersed – or censored – or if for any reason clicking and swiping stopped bringing the desired
effect. Is that scenario so hard to imagine? Is it apocalyptic thinking?
Paranoia?
Then again, on another level,
I simply enjoy the search for answers. And in conversation, cooperative thought and
figuring things out together with friends can be entertaining as well as
informative. “Saving time” with instant answers can be, in fact, a
conversational deal-breaker, turning what started out as conversation into a
technology-worship session. Have you ever had an experience like this? Instead of the
instant answer returning the group to its original conversation, the person
with the “smart” phone engages in hijacking: “And look what else it can do! And I can do this! And this....” At
that point, unless you’re the one with the phone, your role is reduced to
ooh-ing and ah-ing.
After “book beat app” in the
incident I’ve described, my friend pocketed his cell phone, I returned my book
to the shelf, and we continued our enjoyable, congenial discussion of metaphor
and poetry. We were happy to be surrounded by books but felt under no
obligation to worship or attribute intelligence to them.
