It was completely predictable that the e-book phenomenon would spawn various enhancements like video and music designed, according to their creators, to “enrich” the reading experience.
I suppose there are some readers who will welcome having their e-books enhanced by such accompaniments. Indeed, I have known many writers who compose their books while listening to music.
Packaging e-books with musical backgrounds has been announced with much fanfare while video book enhancements have already begun their march into the marketplace.
Alas, I will not succumb to such alleged blandishments. Call me a purist, but as a creator of works of the imagination, meaning works of serious fiction, I consider such embellishments intrusions on the author’s intention and the reader’s reception of this intention.
Boiled down to its essence, the author to reader is a one-on-one communication experience. In telling his or her story, the author has plumbed to the depths of his or her subconscious and conceived their characters to pursue their destinies in a parallel world that grows in the author’s imagination in ways that are often mysterious and unexplainable.
In this imaginative world, the white noise of inspiration already fills the reader’s mental space as organ music reverberates in a giant cathedral. One does not require a musical accompaniment to capture and thrill to the emotional suspense of the author’s creation. I intend in no way to negate the beauty and power of music, but words, too, have their intrinsic artistic power to speak to the human psyche and the reading experience is a prime example.
Nor does one need a musical accompaniment to feel the true power, for example, of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Melville’s Moby Dick, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and yes, the Old and New Testament and a long line of fabulous works of the imagination created by authors that have enriched our lives and given us insight and knowledge into the human condition. Indeed, one might say that the music is already inherent in the prose and can be heard by the reader with great emotional impact within the author’s composition.
I know this sounds a bit highfalutin and perhaps flies in the face of those who will cite the movies as a prime example of how musical accompaniment embellishes a story line. The fact is that movie background music is designed as a kind of guide to the emotional high points that manipulate the action on the screen. It is designed to tell you how to feel and anticipate what a movie character is experiencing or is about to experience as the plot unfolds. There is no need for such an accompaniment in reading.
Nevertheless, I do believe there is probably a place for enhanced e-books, especially in the area of young children’s books where moving images and music could be helpful in engaging a child’s interest. I am somewhat tentative in that assessment since my experience with my own children was reading to them without benefit of other sounds except my own voice, which in retrospect seemed sufficient for their rapt attention.
Perhaps, too, musical and reality sounds will be useful in certain genre categories, particularly science fiction and books that are based upon comic book characters.
But the idea of adding anything more than words to the reading experience gives me pause in another area, such as opening the door to adding advertising to e-books. Using e-books as a platform for advertising is a real possibility and, for me, it is chilling.
I well remember going to the movies in London and, for the first time, being trapped into seeing advertising on the screen prior to the features, which I found offensive. I was apparently premature in celebrating the fact that this practice was not then found in American movie theaters.
It is now standard in most movie theaters in America to be forced to watch advertising before the feature is screened, a practice that intrudes on the pleasure of the movie experience. But then, today’s mass-market movies are all about toys, popcorn and selling a captive audience whatever is on offer.
From my perspective, reading has always been both a solitary and sacred celebration of the imagination, a gift of creation from the author to the reader. What worries me is that first will come the music, then the video and once that intrusion is thrust upon us, then will come the advertising. Advertising does, indeed, have its informational uses, but there are limits to its intrusion, especially for the serious and dedicated reader.
Frankly, I don’t want to open a book by a favorite author and be solicited to save 15% or more on car insurance or be pushed to buy the latest cure for acne.
Categories: Literature
Tags: Amazon, books, e-book, e-readers, kindle, novels, reading, tablets
You make interesting arguments about the joy of privacy and the reader’s expectancy when engaging a good book. But I don’t think you’re much on the side of the angels on this one. I do agree, for those addicted to old-time reading, this can be an unsettling age, readers not quite knowing what to expect. But dissatisfaction, as always, votes with its feet. Publishers know this, and provide alternatives such as a mute button so that those bothered by the musical garnishments have an easy remedy at hand. I personally see a more serious side to easy-breezy new wave publication. As you well know, a good idea takes about 17 seconds of your life, and you have them all the time. But having written your pile of books, you know that writing that good idea takes six months to a year of your life. This is why genre blooms in the book biz; most writers are afraid to risk, to think for themselves, to explore the modern human situation wherever it leads. I understand your negative reaction to audio visual embellishments cropping up in the traditional form of THE BOOK (and find them annoying, myself), but to my mind a far graver nuisance is the growing mountains of garbage that writers and their publishers are churning out. I ask you, is becoming a monk or a poet a business? Entirely a business? Do writers have to be so shackled, whipped and beaten down? Must the industry control what writers write to the deepest levels, to chosing the standard (acceptable) subject matter, selecting plots, rationing out the proper combo of ethnic/sexual orientation/good-bad characters, and even dictating the number of pages writers scribble?
Don’t mind me. Just a few rambling remarks as I sit here with a swiftly cooling latte and a few remaining crumbs from a blueberry scone.
best,
John K.
I thik we are witnessing another reading revolution: the pass from scroll to books (codexes), then the introduction of the Guttenberg’s press were both objected as things dimishing the sacricity and the personal involvement in reading. So there is nothing new here, in a while electronic enhanced books would be a norm.
I also disagree with the fact that enhancement can not add much to the original books. I believe that a short piece of Sir Lawrence Olivier performance would fantastically complement Shakespear’s “Richard the 3rd”, high resolution images from Sixtine Chapel will make the Bible reading even more sacred. Long before that, we got the illustrations for seevral books very tightly attached to the content (Alice in the Wonderland, Don Quixote, etc.). So, it is business as usual!
I think the beauty of ePub format is that it’s capable of so much. Novel fans are finding iBooks a great way to read all-text eBooks. Thumbnails make picture-rich books an smoother browse allowing a reader to spend time with the full-size images they really want to see and skip those they don’t. And reference books, with the addition audio and video, can really bring a subject to life. eBooks can do each so well, that there’s room for all three.
I enjoyed your article and your comments about the changing ecosystem of reading.
Enhancement of e-reading experience by music, videos and even ads sounds interesting to me. Probably, this is an opportunity for differentiation between “enriched” e-reading and traditional “pure” reading from paper. So, we would rediscover some hidden merits of this by then old-fashioned cultural habit and,luckily save it.
Thanks for the information about the Epub. Read the article it very useful. Thanks.
It is tough to discover knowledgeable individuals on this subject, but you sound like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks
While ebook technology is here to stay, I must agree whole heartedly with Mr. Adler. As a poet primarily, my intent in writing is to produce works which will touch the reader in such a way that the themes and scenes will drill down emotionally layer upon layer within the reader’s psyche and perception.
If poetry is to be effective, the author relates a story with a beginning, middle and end, in as brief and concise a presentation as possible. Therefore words must communicate and relate simultaneously.
It is for this reason I no longer do ‘open mic readings’. I find it much to difficult for members in the audience to listen, process and subsequently keep up with the pace of oral renditions. This is by no means a ‘slam’ on the listeners. Such instantaneous juggling of the multiple tasks involved means much of the work’s intent is simply lost, as is often times the beauty or impact of the piece itself.
The power of the words and their construction plays better when the reader has the opportunity to read and reflect; whether by line, stanza or verse.
I personally do not own a Kindle or any other electronic book reader. I like a book to be a book,the feel and smell of the paper already adding to the pure pleasure. I dind print far easier to deal with. In the UK there is a movement, where you leave a book you enjoyed while travelling on the windowsill of train station waiting rooms. Any other passenger can pick it up, read it and do the same at another station. Not so easy with an e-book.
A friend is technically blind, and this brings us to yet another form of ‘reading’. E-readers have opened a library world for her and I just asked her would she want music videos r advertisement etc added. For her it would be too frustrating and would diminish her ‘reading’ pleasure by making it stressful. Like hardback and softback, should these e-books then also be available in different formats so we have a choice for a preferred style of e-reading?