To the Southbank last night to hear two esteemed novelists (Margaret Atwood and Andrew O’Hagan), a preeminent publisher (Stephen Page of Faber and Faber) and a literary critic (Erica Wagner of The Times) discuss the future of the book.
Andrew O’Hagan raised an alarm on behalf of authors everywhere, suggesting that digitization and other trends threatened to rip the book apart at the seams, maybe even eradicating the more conceptual things that hold books together, things like form and narrativity, not to mention copyright. O’Hagan proudly spoke up for writerly greed, and for good books as a pastime mainly for educated people.
Margaret Atwood did not agree with any of it. She took the calming, long view about the book’s future, noting that books were also once a new technology. “Human beings are narrative creatures,” she said. “They’re also poetry-making creatures.”
Atwood said eBooks wouldn’t catch on until someone designed a version that you can drop in the bath. She added that eBooks, when they do arrive, would be ideal for seaside holidays. (All this water made me wonder whether, like Jane Smiley, Margaret Atwood also relies on a hot bath to get past writer’s blocks.)
Stephen Page talked thoughtfully about the importance of publishers and editors as filters and refiners of the stuff people read, suggesting that this function is more necessary that ever because of the sheer number of books published now (more than at any other time in human history – hmmm). So-called democratic media lurked between the lines he spoke, threatening an old order. But Page found something to smile about.
“In some ways,” he said, “the arrival of blogs has relieved publishers of an enormous burden. We don’t have to read that stuff anymore.”
Still, Margaret Atwood drew the loudest laugh of the evening (her comic timing is superb) by evoking the scene of the award-winning novelist (her) sitting down to the computer to work on her latest tome, only to be cheerfully prompted by the box in the corner: “You appear to be writing a letter”.
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