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PAlnlSAN R.EVIEW
people in a place like Zimbabwe, who have probably never seen a fax or
a word processor or a computer or any of the stuff that we take for grant–
ed, might be in better shape than our kids' because they have !Iut bee!l
assaulted all the time. They are of course going
to
catch up with us, but
probably not as efficiently because they have governments which steal
everything that comes their way. It might in fact save them. This is a fair–
ly cynical remark, but it's a funny thing that I can have a conversation
with a young teacher in the bush who is trying to teach without proper
textbooks, without an atlas, without anything, who loves books as the
people in this room do, who yearns for them, and who sees books as a
source of life, but I couldn't have this conversation with my highly-edu–
cated young friends in 13ritain, who are not interested. They are not
interested in ideas. They're not interested in anything in books.
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merely describing something. I have no solution for it. As I said before,
I think probably many of you are familiar with a lot of what I have said.
These are the sad thoughts that are running through my head at the
moment.
Fred Siegel:
You talked about how important reading was in the early
modern period, and it strikes me that it
W;lS
because it was so intimate–
ly connected with Protestantism. It's the ability
to
read the Bible, the
necessity of reading the 13ibk, and the interiority that's associated with
Protestantism that gives reading its power, its sacredness. That glow has
long since worn off as our society became esselltially de-Protestantized.
McCI uhan wrote about the media revol ution in the sixties, as a screed
against the Reformation. He was hoping that that interiority would be
lost by these new media, and he wouldn't be surprised by anything you
were saying. In a sellSe he anticipated and welcomed it. He was a
counter-R.eformationist, though people mistook him for a modernist.
His hope was that, as reading was lost, ignorance would return, and with
ignorance wonder, and with wonder the singularity of the medieval
church and its glories. Protestantism was essential to this original power
of reading. What you're talking about we've really seen coming for thir–
ty years and McCluhan in a sense is its most-maligned prophet.
Doris Lessing:
The thing is I'd like to know what you think about this
because I find it shocking, you see.
Fred Siegel:
I find your description entirely accurate. I think people do
have shorter and shorter attention spans. I think what you describe is
true, but it's interesting that McCluhan predicted it. He
S;lW
what dTect
television would have, that television replacing books meant that people
