The Future of Books

Today, a friend of mine posted an article about the future of books. In this article, Adam Penenburg says that in the future, books as we know it will live in museums, and in their place will be multi-media experiences. Authors will intertwine words with pictures, videos, sound clips, music, and so much more. The author will be "acting more like directors and production companies than straight wordsmiths." Penenburg claims that mere words will suddenly seem stagnant on the page.

Truly, I believe that the future is headed in that direction, and for non-fiction works, nothing could be better. Could you imagine reading a text book about Louis Armstrong and clicking on a link that immediately beings to play the song the author is discussing? Or watch a clip of the first steps on the moon while reading about how the astronauts got there? Cookbooks will now have videos that can demonstrate a cooking technique. Footnotes will no longer be at the bottom of the page or limited to a tiny amount of information, and students can interact with history and science like never before.

And then there's fiction. Artists have been tweaking, changing, toying with, experimenting with all mediums of art since the beginning of time. This could be another avenue. A poet could choose exactly what image is in your mind and what music plays in your ears while you read his poem. He can craft almost every aspect of your experience with his poem. A novelist could show you exactly what the town in the book looks like, or what every character looks like far beyond descriptions through words. A writer no longer has to just be a writer - he can, as Penenburg says, direct every detail of your reading experience. This, however, is where my fear lies.

Reading is an individual experience. An author is a wordsmith. He crafts a world using only words. But words are fluid. They are anything but stagnant. Words change meaning from generation to generation. They change from culture to culture. They even change from individual to individual. No two people will have the exact same experience from the same work, and I love that. I love that my own personal experience of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is mine and no one else's , and that it doesn't stop anybody else from having their own personal experiences as well. Thank you, Eliot, for not including pictures of what those mermaids look like.

For example. Take a room full of people. Hand them a descriptive paragraph from a novel, and ask them individually to sketch whatever it is the paragraph describes. Each person will bring his or her own individual view and experiences and imagination to that drawing. None of the sketches will be the same. Elements will be the same; for instance, if the paragraph says that the scruffy man wearing a blue coat walked down the dark sidewalk on a snowy Christmas eve, every person will draw a man (who will be some kind of scruffy) wearing a blue coat and in an upright position, a dark sidewalk with snow, and probably something indicating Christmas. But even within those limiters are worlds of possibilities.

When the author begins to litter his work with limiters through images and other added elements, the experience of reading a novel becomes a controlled experience - much like watching a movie. Yes, authors have for eons included images with their works. Cover art and artist inserts have been part of the publishing industry for quite some time. Outside of picture books, however, they don't paint the entire book for you. The first Harry Potter book had a picture of a boy with glasses and a scar on his forehead, so that was probably what you imagined when you read it [and thank god daniel radcliffe was born when he was because otherwise we'd have to find another kid who was the spitting image of the cover art]. But what about those other characters? Hermione? Or the settings? How about the school? Do you remember the reading experience you had before you saw the movies? What did Snape look like to you? What did his voice sound like? And then you watched the movies, which were so closely released with the books that after you watched the first movie, the rest of the books had specific images in your head that matched the movie. Daniel Radcliffe spoke when you read Harry's lines. You knew what Hermione looks like. And she looks exactly like what the person next to you thinks she looks like. But how about those characters who didn't make it to the movies? If we all sat down and sketched THOSE characters, would they be as similar if we all sat down to sketch out what Harry looks like?

When a director makes a movie out of a book, he is giving you his interpretation - his personal experience with the book (yes - other elements such as box office, budget, and audience appeal play a part, but it is based on his experience). He is not giving you THE book. His interpretation could be different from yours, and that is why no movie adaptation can ever really destroy a book for you. It can still be your world and your imagination as long as you actively choose to leave behind that director's experience. The director is not the author, and only the author can say, "yes. Willy Wonka looks like Gene Wilder and Veruca Salt looks like Julie Dawn Cole. They are exactly who I imagined when I wrote that novel."

What if Shakespeare had included a drawing of what Macbeth should look like? Or Hamlet? Thank god he didn't actually ever specifically describe Cleopatra. We can all individually decide what absolute beauty is, and then we can agree or disagree with a director's casting choice. But we wouldn't be able to argue with Shakespeare if he had included a picture of a specific blonde, tall, busty woman wearing a red toga because then that specific woman is what Cleopatra would have to look like.

Reading is already interactive - the best kind of interactive. You take the words the author has given you, toss them in your brain, mix them with images and your imagination, and then create images and movies and sounds and smells and music. You could decide that Huck Finn looks like your little brother or the old man in "The Old Man and the Sea" looks like your grandfather if you want. Sometimes you share those images with others, and they are allowed to say, "oh, well when I read that, I see this," or "I always imagined Titus Andronicus to be tiny, yet fierce instead of big and tall and built like an ox." Unless they have decided to interpret the author's use of the word "tall" to mean "short", they are not wrong, and that's the beauty of it.

Please do not think that I feel this form of media morphing is completely wrong or has no place in the world. In fact, sometimes it would be fun to have a 360 experience from an artist (think Hitchhiker's Guide). But this future medium should not completely replace books as we know them. An author should not always want to completely control their audience's experience with his words. If they do, they're in the wrong medium and should sign up to direct the next film Hollywood will give them.

Penenburg says, "And ask yourself: Which would you rather have, the hardcover book of today or this rich, multimedia treatment of the same title? Suddenly mere words on a page may feel a bit lifeless." I say, "Penenburg, my imagination works just fine and words have never seemed lifeless to me. Please hand me the hardcover book filled with endless possibilities and interpretations."