Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

On his 1988 concert record The Off-White Album, comedian Dennis Miller has a fake routine where he imagines what the Civil War would have been like if, instead of Ulysses S. Grant, the Union army had been under the command of Cary Grant. But, of course, it’s just a ruse; Miller (at least, the Dennis Miller of the ‘80s) would never stoop to such a comedic low. He explains that what he likes to do is ”get right up to the precipice, pivot and then jete back to Coolsville.”

Well, this is exactly what I hoped was happening when I read a blog entry by Shirley Dent on the Guardian book blog earlier this week. Entitled, “Tolstoy and Dickens. Who’d win in a fight?,” with the subtitle, “War and Peace and Our Mutual Friend are literary heavyweights in more ways than one. This one’s going to go a few rounds,” it sounds pretty silly, right? Well, I guess all of this was spurred by something known as the Bookshop Barnies’ Balloon Debate. Dent describes this spectacle as an “annual event [that] involves half-a-dozen terrified pundits arguing terrifically for two minutes for the book they think is the best EVER, before being interrogated and voted out by an ever-so-merry, ever-so-up-for-it, ever-so-informed mob.” And what’s the literary death match that will be debated this year? Tolstoy versus Dickens.

Now, of course, discussing the merits of various literary figures has a modicum of worth (and Dent, at least in her blog posting, has some intelligent things to say: “Dickens grasps the story, squeezes and twists it into shape. Tolstoy lets it flow through his fingers, his touch on the characters barely perceptible”), but with all the challenges and changes facing publishing, literacy, writers and writing, is this really how booklovers choose to spend their time? Coming up with insular and inane competitions between long-dead writers that most of the general public couldn’t care less about because they’re all too busy spending their time on pretty much anything except Tolstoy and Dickens?

So to waste valuable energy with this kind of academic minutiae seems like a crime. (Like, I wonder if Gogol could beat Chekhov in a sprint?! I think it’d be Gogol, by a nose.) This kind of thing reminds me of how the band kept playing while the Titanic sank. Except, in this scenario — while literacy rates are tanking, and books become more and more marginalized in society — booklovers aren’t just enjoying the music while the waves start to lap at their feet, they’re also spending these last moments playing “name that tune.”