Obsolescence and Nostalgia

In The Anxiety of Obsolescence (Vanderbilt University Press, 2006), Kathleen Fitzpatrick makes several arguments concerning the latest call of the “death of the novel” due to new media.  After pointing out that the introduction of a new technology always heralds the death of some form or another of literary expression, The Anxiety of Obsolescence argues from the very beginning that “the ways we speak and write about new media – and particularly the means by which we express our concerns about the world that new media forms are eroding or leaving behind – may reveal more about our own entrenched cultural ideologies than they do about the media themselves” (9).

As I look around at my own culture, it seems to me that we spend a lot of time and energy looking back at the greatness of what was, rather than looking forward to the possibilities of the new.  This does not just apply to digital media and technology; I’ve noticed the phenomenon in attitudes towards family, education, gender roles, child-raising, and government, just to name a few.  In short – it’s pervasive and not limited to any one field.  Why is the contemplation of “what was” always extended to mean “what was, was better?”  Why, for example, is there a big push in elementary and secondary education right now to go “back to the basics”?  Why are we trying to force the youth of today into a restrictive environment that does not at all mimic the way the world works?  I would argue that this has nothing to do with fear of the unknown or fear of experimentation.  This has to do with the fact that in order to preserve the current (white, male-dominated) order of things in Texas, we must keep our values firmly in the same space that allowed it to become so in the first place.  We don’t want education that empowers minorities or women because that will upset our established order – so we create this ideal version of the past. If you can convince the public that the past was better, then you can convince the public that innovation itself is dangerous. The current hierarchy of power remains secure.

That last paragraph might have seemed (and might have been) somewhat of a digression for the purposes of this blog.  Bear with me, though, because the same kind of thinking applies to the idea of the novel’s (or any printed literature’s) obsolescence in the wake of new media.  Fitzpatrick examines the effects of loudly declaring something obsolete or marginalized, and one of the observations she makes is that this is not only an attempt to call attention to the thing itself, but to identify protect that thing as part of a high-culture not meant to be easily accessible by the masses.  Television was declared, and still is declared by bibliophiles and critics, as something that does not require thought or intelligence, and, therefore, that sucks the intelligence and the ability for higher-order thinking away from its viewers.  Intelligent people read, say the anti-television criers.  The novel is dead, everyone wants to watch television, and the world is falling to pieces…this seems to be the message.

What’s odd about this message, though, is twofold: First, Fitzpatrick points out that there are Borders and Barnes and Nobles popping up everywhere and that books are still being written and still being sold in mass quantities (4).  Writing in 2006, Fitzpatrick wasn’t yet privy to the astronomical rise of the e-book, begun in November of 2007 and still led by Amazon’s Kindle, nor did she predict the downfall of Borders, which began in 2010 and just reached its sad but inevitable conclusion.  Having said that, though, I do not intend to say that Fitzpatrick was incorrect in her assertion that despite cries of its death, the book industry is alive and thriving – what it means is that the printed book industry is moving (mostly on its own terms) towards what might be called a merger with new technology rather than staying, as some critics would have it, engaged in a battle with it.

The second odd thing about the statement that the novel is dead in the wake of the new media is that the online texts, film, and other forms of new media are still so very dependent upon their textual predecessors, just as the first written texts were dependent upon the oral tradition that came before them and the first (Gutenberg) printing press was dependent upon the work of the scribes before it.  Something can always been seen as being removed from an art as technology continues to provide new mediums for exploration and reproduction; what the staunchest critics refuse to see as they continually look backwards at a “better time” is that new technology always builds upon the old.

The explosion of e-readers and e-books is a curious combination of innovation and nostalgia.  Since I’m a Kindle owner, I am going to focus upon that platform; take for granted the idea that I am speaking of the others when I mention it.  Nostalgic bibliophiles enjoy the fact that the Kindle operates more or less like a book; they’ve even created what they call digital ink technology in order to make the reading screen look like print.  The book was more or less unchanged in this medium; what I and other readers enjoy the most is the idea that we can carry our library in our purses or briefcases and that we have the ability to instantly shop for another book if we happen to run out of reading material.  What we still have, though, is essentially a book – words on the page – nothing too fancy, nothing that takes away from the reading experience that we enjoyed with the medium of print.   The Kindle feels like an innovation and is in its own way, but it looks backward as much as it looks forward.

Fitzpatrick suggests after a reading of David Wallace’s Infinite Jest (Little, Brown, 1996) and  Rick Moody’s Ice Storm (Little, Brown, 1992), two postmodern novels concerned with the cultural implications (or the cultural causes) of TV viewing habits, that both novels imply “a hierarchy of media forms in which the novel itself is proposed to be sufficiently edifying to allow its escape from the category of entertainment, thus creating, in a fashion similar to that of the novel of obsolescence, a protected space outside contemporary culture’s corruptions in which the novel can continue to flourish” (216).  I tentatively argue that devices such as the Kindle look to fill this kind of a space. By distancing themselves from their flashier and more advanced counterparts, from the more visual and less textual modes of television, film, gaming, and interactivity, they seek to keep the novel outside and above the digital culture.  So far, they have been successful in doing so. Even though the death of Borders (and the survival of Barnes and Noble) is being blamed upon the rise of the e-reader and other new technologies, dedicated e-readers are not being declared murderers in the death of the novel in the same way that television and the Internet have been.

What does all this mean for authors?  In 2006, a novelist within the new technological culture and amid the cries of the genre’s death may have had to choose “between being a marginalized cultural figure and contributing to the novel’s marginality” (Fitzpatrick 22), but the rise of the e-book is providing a cultural safe place for the novel as a medium.  An author, then, has a bridge between two mediums in the dedicated e-book – the work remains the same and the consumption similar to the way it has “always been.”  If this is the case, then the anxiety about the obsolescence of the novel should be fading, at least somewhat.  People are still reading; the novel is as alive and well as the death of the novel is according to Paul Mann (Fitzpatrick 26).  Right?  Not necessarily, at least for those fighting for the status of the novel as a high-culture, marginalized entity.

Fitzpatrick points out that much of the anxiety of the novel’s obsolescence is based upon the (white male author’s) definition of serious, high-brow literature, and the safe space of the e-book certainly applies to these works.  However, the presence of this media also allows for a gateway to the masses: free and low-cost publication of their work, and a ready availability to mainstream consumers.  Through Amazon’s Create Space and Digital Publishing Platform, a text no longer required to go through a major publishing house in order to be available.  Prior to this, publication of an author’s text was reserved to those who made it through the industry or to those who could afford the prohibitively high cost of self-publication.  By taking this social and economic cog out of the wheel, so to speak, any author can get his or her work published, and, through social media, any author (if he or she is willing to work for it) can promote their book and allow the masses to decide whether or not it is a quality work worthy of their time and money.  Authors, with varying degrees of success, have successfully broken into this market (check out Amanda Hocking as one phenomenal example).  Authorship, even if you discount blogging and social media, is no longer limited to those who successfully make it through the barriers presented by large-scale corporate firms.  Through Amazon’s platforms and others like them, authorship itself is available to the masses.

To those looking back at the days of the print novel as 1) dead and 2) better: never fear.  There is still room for anxious discourse about the marginalization of literature as a form of high art.  And according to Fitzpatrick, this anxiety is neither unusual nor has it been strictly true in any case of the advance of technology.  It is simply a marker of our own culture, our anxieties about the culture, and at the root of it, the idea that anything new is suspect, and that looking backwards (and through rose-colored glasses, at that) is the way for society to progress.