Deviations into sense

[oursin]

Robert McCrum is surprisingly non-poncey in Fifty things I've learned about the literary life.

I particularly like:

20. Literary fiction is like sci-fi. It's a genre.*
15. You don't have to read every book you buy, and you certainly don't have to finish the book you've started.
34. Lists are the curse of the age.
38. Ebooks are not the end of the world.
42. No one is obliged to like Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities.**

*I think this should be no 1
** That is a relief, as I have a paperback I bought in 197x languishing somewhere in the great book morass, still unread.

[W]e ask whether the internet is actually changing the way our minds work and Aleks Krotoski comes up with some surprisingly non-panicky or gosh-wow reactions:

'[T]here's no definitive answer and a whole lot of contradictory evidence
....
Many of the claims are a synthesis of hunches, agendas, anecdotal evidence and a response to the general paranoia that dogs us when faced with something unknown
....
[N]ew technologies – whether the printing press, the telegraph, the railway or the web – produce exactly the same concerns about our cognitive capabilities. How quickly we forget.

There has not been enough time to address whether the web is actually rewiring our brains; it will be a few years before any longitudinal studies can offer evidence one way or another
....
[T]he web is not doing anything to us; that it merely presents us with a mirror that challenges us to face ourselves.

Comments

[kore]

No one is obliged to like Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities

Ahaha I don't think I even have a copy of that anywhere, it looked so terrifying. I may one day tackle Proust, but Musil? Nooooo.

[oursin]

Proust is wonderful, though I regard Swann's Way as the necessary price of admission.

[rydra_wong]

Proust is snarky queer kinky fun! Also, Proust is very soothing in a crisis, because you are guaranteed to have Enough Book for almost any eventuality. There's something deeply comforting about beginning a re-read in a stressful time and knowing that the stress will be over before the book is.

[firecat]

[N]ew technologies – whether the printing press, the telegraph, the railway or the web – produce exactly the same concerns about our cognitive capabilities. How quickly we forget.

This one especially.

[0jack]

I think people do a lot of panicking without remembering that we are plastic, adaptable creatures capable of developing skills in competing areas. One can surf the web and also meditate or play music or read a book or do math problems—numerous activities are available to us that allow for different brain functions. I've been careful to provide myself with competing requirements since I became active on the internet, because of my ADHD.

[mamculuna]

"No one is obliged to like Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities."

I do like the title, but that's as far as I've ever gotten. See #15.

[tree_and_leaf]

That is a relief, as I have a paperback I bought in 197x languishing somewhere in the great book morass, still unread.

For a long time I felt that, as a Germanist, I ought to read it. I never got anywhere.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Dare I admit that I have never heard of Robert Musil or that book? I don't even know which field I've now lost all street cred in.

[surexit]

Literary fiction is like sci-fi. It's a genre.</I. UGH YES.