Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Larry McMurtry on "the end of the culture of the book"

Author Larry McMurtry sees the end of book culture | Lifestyle/Features | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "Q: What will you talk about at Rice?

A: The end of the culture of the book. I’m pessimistic. Mainly it’s the flow of people into my bookshop in Archer City. They’re almost always people over 40.

I don’t see kids, and I don’t see kids reading. I think little kids love to have stories read to them, but when they get to 10 or 11 or 12, they run into this tsunami of technology: iPod, iPhone, Blackberries.

They don’t resist it, and it’s normal that they wouldn’t; it’s their culture. I’m not so sure they ever come back to reading. Some will, but most won’t."

2 comments:

Kent Morgan said...

I agree with Larry McMurty. The other day a friend of mine told me about driving his teenage granddaughter and some of the other girls on their high school hockey team to a game. His granddaughter was sitting beside him texting. He asked her who she was sending the message to and it turned out that she was texting her friend in the back seat of the van. That pretty well says it all about communication. At least they were reading and writing.

Anonymous said...

My generation saw Television attain primacy, which was supposed to signal the end of literacy back in the early 60s.

Where did we go wrong?