The Warren Adler E-Sheet 61

In this issue:

• Greetings From Publishing Central
• The End of Words Alone

	Greetings From Publishing Central We are happy to offer you another issue of the Warren Adler E-Sheet, which keeps you up to date on what is happening in the author's world.

The End of Words Alone

In a desperate effort to sell more books, publishers are beginning to accompany the books with music CDs to provide what they believe is a mood-enhancing accompaniment to the text. Apparently the purveyors of words now believe that words are no longer enough to attract readers.

What such an addle-headed marketing idea reveals is that publishers are losing faith in words as a primary communications tool. They apparently believe that the alarming decline in younger readers addicted to pop music can be lured into becoming readers by this reverse marketing ploy. 

It was bound to happen ever since the movie moguls targeted the publishing business as a revenue producer. Background music has always been a mainstay of movie making, signaling an audience through musical coloring when to laugh or cry and as an adjunct and accompaniment to the story line being acted out on the screen. Television further embellished the idea of guiding the viewer’s reaction through canned laughter. Such ploys seem perfectly appropriate for on-screen passive entertainment, which engages the visual and auditory senses and makes little use of that mysterious inner energy known as the imagination.

The purveyors of words now believe that words are no longer enough to attract readers.

The idea comes on the heels of another publishing ploy, the graphic novel, which takes its cue from comic books by expanding the text balloon concept to the more lineal form of the novel with a copious accompaniment of cartoon drawings. Thus, the publishers believe, that the comic book, in this new format achieves a respectability of sorts and, naturally, an enhanced price.

This concept, too, is a retreat from words alone, although one might argue that illustrations of situations in the story has been a long tradition in publishing although the drawings themselves were sporadic and hardly dominant.

To us, the hardy band of words-alone readers, such new concepts, while not surprising, are laughable. Words are our gateway into the imagination and nothing is purer or more satisfying to a reader than creating in his own mind the authors intent in communicating his story. While I am skewing these remarks toward fiction, it also holds true for nonfiction, which requires the same focused concentration on the text.

Reading, as I understand and pursue it, is a solitary pursuit, a one on one communication system, a private chat between author and reader, one mind addressing another without any distractions or enhancements.

This is not meant to denigrate the audible book, which is a form of adaptation, conveyed through a reader’s voice, which adds dramatic flourish to the words, but is still one small step removed from solitary reading experience. This is not to be confused with the oral storytelling tradition that flourished before the invention of the printed book and still has an honorable place in the communication arts. Visual adaptations have their place as well, but they are further removed from the purity of the author’s original intent via the written word.

Reading a novel, for example, in cozy isolation and quietude is one of life’s rare pleasures. If music is required the reader’s mind will create his or her own accompaniment. There is no need for any outside distraction. Nothing but the reader’s imagination is required to follow the author’s guided word tour through his conjured story. Do War and Peace, The Great Gatsby, Great Expectations, and the Bible need a musical accompaniment to underline its power? I don’t think so.

Music, of course, has its own magical rewards and language. Songs tell great stories and music and voice lend great enhancements to literature on the operatic and musical stage.  We are talking here of the printed word, a comparatively modern invention that represents the most artful way devised for a work of the imagination to be played out in a reader’s mind.

Reading is a solitary pursuit...a private chat between author and reader, one mind addressing another without any distractions or enhancements.

It is undoubtedly true that some readers derive great pleasure from listening to music as they read. One wonders if it is the pleasure of the words or the music that is paramount, or a combination of both. It baffles me how one can concentrate with equal fervor on two things at once. Certainly, one aspect of these two systems of communication has to be diminished.

It has always amused me to see someone encased in the musical bubble of his iPod in one ear and talking on the phone with the other. Nor is it uncommon to observe someone connected to an iPod in both ears in fervent live conversation with someone. Please don’t confuse me with being a safety activist and reformer but I often wonder if there is any correlation between car radio listening and traffic accidents. Apparently cell phone activity in cars has already been deemed dangerous to a driver’s concentration.

I am reminded of my mother’s admonition to me about doing my homework when I was a schoolboy. I was not allowed to listen to the radio while doing my homework.  Perhaps it was such a prohibition that has conditioned me to this point of view, but I doubt it.

Words are the principal conveyance of meaning between people and I’ve always believed that the printed word, reading, was an extremely private endeavor that needed no sensory enhancements. 

Perhaps I’m just being a fussy old purist.

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Until next time, happy reading.

Warren Adler

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