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The Demise of the Fireside Reader
Just the other day a radio advertisement touted the benefits of talking books, full audio reproduction of great works, both current and past. It's a hurried world they said. Who has the time anymore to sit down and actually read books from cover to cover? Why not slip the words into the tape machine or the CD player and immerse yourself in another world as you travel to and from work.
What a great idea! The demise of reading for pleasure usurped by a world gone crazy with immediate gratification, instant millions in the lottery, sixty hour work weeks with excess labour to be completed at home, bundled up into a briefcase or a backpack. To where did the home that represented the last sanctuary of sanity, and the last venue of the pleasure reader, disappear?
With all the chaos of neo-conservatism paying homage to the thirst and hunger of a multinational progress" machine, talking books appear to be a great alternative, just as is the book adaptation, made-for-TV movie or the film rendition of a popular, classic novel. The audience cannot help but hunger for these alternatives. The readers of bygone days immerse themselves easily into these media, slipping beneath the celluloid, magnetic or digital surface like playful otters mindless of the consequences.
These technologies, great within themselves do change the way we are, the way we think, and possibly the way our brain will evolve. They have certainly changed the way we, as a society, approach reading for enjoyment and the way writers covey their stories.
Readers are no longer satisfied with detailed descriptions full of imagery and foreshadowing symbolism, pedantic dialogues that explain each subtle nuance of relationships, or even completed thoughts and story lines. Life isn't like that anyway; how frequently do we have closure, finalized dialogue in linear form, landscapes that complement the interior of the mind. The world of film has given us the jagged edges, the quick cuts, the maze of unfinished dialogue, the pans across a close-up face, the beginnings without dialogue, the opening scenes full of inconclusive, unfinished speech full of tension and suspense. Our eyes are drawn to these techniques and our ears too. We work at interpreting the stimuli as we interpret silences within the moments of our lives.
Writers of both prose and poetry evolve into crafting their work this way also, so that the stories vibrate visually and audibly with these same techniques. However the readers, to be entertained, often don't have the time to actively immerse themselves into these new techniques and would rather gravitate toward the screen on weekends and during the evening and toward the sound track on the way to work.
The emerging technologies and techniques of telling stories enrich us if we embrace them but not at the expense of what existed in the past. Why can't we enjoy the fast paced chaotic media of the present while having also the time to sit quietly beside the fire with a favourite book, classical or modern, and simply read letting both old and new techniques entertain and give us pleasure at our own pace? Maybe the answer to that question resides in what the global society is becoming - hurried, harried, and not in control of its own direction, speed nor its acceleration.
David Fraser lives in Nanoose Bay, on Vancouver Island. He is the founder and editor of Ascent Aspirations Magazine, http:// www.ascentaspirations.ca, since 1997. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in over 40 journals including Three Candles, Regina Weese, Ardent, Quills and Ygdrasil. He has published a collection of his poetry, Going to the Well (2004), a collection of short fiction, The Dark Side of the Billboard (2006 )and edited and published the print issues of Ascent Aspirations Magazine Anthology One (2005) , Anthology Two – Windfire (2006), and Anthology Three, AguaTerra (2007) http://www.ascentaspirations .ca/aapublishing.htm
A second collection of poetry, Running Down the Wind will appear in 2007
David is currently the Federation of BC Writers Regional Director for The Islands Region. His latest passion is developing Nanaimo’s newest spoken word series, WordStorm, http:// www.wordstorm.ca
David Fraser has a BA in English from University of Toronto, and an MEd in adult education from OISE. In Ontario he taught English, Creative Writing Writer’s Craft among other subjects at the secondary school level for 30 years. He was the ski school director for High Park Snow School for 8 years. Currently he is a full time writer who also teaches skiing at Mt Washington in the winter.
Email: David Fraser
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