A Little History of Literature

by John Sutherland

  Literature in Your Lifetime… and Beyond

  The printed ‘book’ – a physical thing made up of paper, type, ink and board – has been around now for over 500 years. It has served literature wonderfully: packaging it in cheap (sometimes beautiful) forms that have helped to sustain mass literacy. Few inventions have lasted longer, or done more good.

  The book may, however, have had its day. The tipping point has come very recently, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, when e-books – digital things made up of algorithms and pixels – began to outsell the traditional book on Amazon. An e-book, as it's currently marketed for handheld tablets, looks eerily like a ‘real’ book, just as the early printed books, such as Gutenberg's, looked just like manuscripts. But, of course, it doesn't behave like a ‘real’ Gutenbergian book. The e-book has the same relation to its predecessor as the horseless carriage (that is, the automobile) had to the horse-drawn carriage.

  With an e-book you can alter the type-size, turn the pages with your thumbs (instead of your index finger) at lightning speed, search the text, and extract lumps of it for downloading. In short, you can do a lot more with an e-book, although, as it's routinely pointed out, you can't drop it in the bath. And, of course, the e-book is still evolving – readers won't have to wait 500 years for what comes next. Book apps are already creating new formats and new ways of reading. What forms will literature take in the years to come? What new delivery systems will it use? In the libraries of the future, will we no more see a print-and-paper book than we see a horse-drawn carriage on the motorway?

  By way of answering these questions, let's start from three basics that will condition the future world of literature, however it is delivered to us. First, there will be a lot more literature available. Second, literature will come to us in different, untraditional ways (in audio, visual and ‘virtual’ forms). Third, it will come in new packages.

  The first, the ‘too-muchness’ of literature, is already with us and expanding all the time. Any kind of screen with an internet connection gives its owner access via new (and often free) e-libraries, such as Project Gutenberg, to a quarter of a million works of literature. You hold in the palm of your hand the equivalent of enough old-fashioned books to fill an aircraft-hanger. What's on offer is increasing all the time. Delivery is instantaneous and the material can be customised to your personal preferences for reading it.

  This mind-crushing plentifulness creates whole new sets of problems. There are those still living (and I am one) who were raised in a cultural environment whose central features were scarcity, shortage and inaccessibility. If you wanted a new novel, you had either to save up the money to pay for it, or put your name down on a waiting list at the local public library. It was annoying. But, in a way, it made things simpler. You had fewer options.

  Now, for relatively small sums, a couple of screen-strokes can procure you anything newly published and virtually limitless numbers of secondhand books. On the Web, a search engine (one of them aptly called ‘Jeeves’, like the butler) will serve you up any new or ancient poem you want. All you have to do is enter a couple of keywords (wandered + lonely + cloud).

  In a single lifetime – mine, for example – shortage has been replaced by an embarrassment of choice. So where, in this electronic Aladdin's Cave, does one start? More importantly, where should we invest the limited (life-)time at our disposal? It's calculated that someone at school now will encounter some fifty or so works of literature in their school career, and those studying literature at university around 300 more. Most people will probably consume no more than 1,000 works of literature in their adult lifetime. If that.

  Where some literature is concerned (books set for examination, for example) we have no choice. But usually it's entirely up to us what we choose to read. We are, as readers in the present time, paddlers in a deluge. In Shakespeare's day there were, it has been estimated, some 2,000 books available to a bookish person like him. You could be, as the phrase was, ‘well read’. That is a description for which no one in the future will qualify.

  One reading strategy, followed by many, is to fall back on old favourites, the ‘Usual Suspects’. In other words the canon, the classics, the works currently topping the bestseller lists, the whole mix spiced up by word-of-mouth from trusted friends and advisers. This could be called swimming with the tide.

  An alternative is what we might call the ‘shopping trolley’ strategy – choosing from the wealth of what is available by defining your own specific needs, interests and tastes, and tailoring your literary diet to what suits you best. When it comes to literature, says William Gibson (pioneer of the ‘cyberpunk’ science fiction genre), we are ‘worms in the cheese’. No worm will consume the whole cheese, and no worm will tunnel through in the same way as any other worm.

  The problem of ‘managing surplus’ is further complicated by the fact that what we have in our hand is much more than a functional text-delivery system. It can go beyond words on the page and also provide music, film, opera, TV and – most insidiously – games. How can the pixel-printed word compete? How do we make time to listen to our favourite music and read the latest novel (available, at a relatively painless price, on the same handheld device)?

  Whatever else, these days we need to be educated in the intelligent use and investment of time. That, not money, is what we will be short of in the future. How much time does the average working person have for culture, loosely defined, in an average week? Around ten hours, it is estimated. How long does it take to read a new novel by Hilary Mantel (since we've mentioned her), or Jonathan Franzen? You've guessed it. Around ten hours.

  At the moment we are in a transitional or ‘bridge’ moment in our literary world. The electronic ‘faux book’ format which we cling to is an example of what the critic Marshall McLuhan called ‘rear-mirrorism’. What he meant by this is that we always see the new in terms of the old. We hold on to the past because we are nervous about the future or feel unsure how to handle it. Children and comfort blankets come to mind.

  Fragments of the old can often be found in the new, if we look carefully enough. Have you ever wondered why films have musical soundtracks but stage plays don't? When Kenneth Branagh played Henry V on the screen, there was thundering music (composed by Patrick Doyle, and conducted by Simon Rattle). On stage, when he plays the same part, there is none. The reason is that silent films – which were all that was available for thirty years – had pit orchestras or, at the very least, piano accompaniment. The music stayed on, even after the ‘talkies’ came along. Why do the pages of books have such large margins – why doesn't print extend nearer the four edges? Because early manuscript books allowed space for marginal comment and annotation. We still have the margins, though few use them for writing notes in, and libraries get furious if you do. It's a perfect example of ‘rear-mirrorism’.

  Annotation and comment will, however, thrive in the new electronic margins. What, exactly, do the moors of Wuthering Heights's Yorkshire look like? It would be informative for readers to be able to call them up. Particularly those readers – now that literature is a global phenomenon – who have never been to the wilder areas of the north of England and probably never will.

  New technology, will, for a certainty, stimulate the production and consumption of ‘graphic’ fiction, and ‘poetry’ (however loosely defined). Literature has up to now been overridingly textual – essentially words on the page. It is one of the things that, regrettably, can render it unattractive to readers (particularly younger readers) whose culture (via screens and game consoles) is richly audio-visual and increasingly ‘virtual’. Getting your stories from black marks on a white surface is not so exciting. The graphic novel is exciting, as is poetry set to popular music. All those Guy Fawkes masks, worn by the young agitators of the Occupy movement, were inspired by a graphic novel, Alan Moore's V for Vendetta – the masks are directly copied from the illustrator David Lloyd's design. Graphic fiction, like the comic book to which it is r
elated, eases itself into film readily, creating a large knock-on readership. The economic rise of Japan and China, whose writing systems are traditionally pictographic, will add force to this mutation.

  Interactive literature, which requires the reader to co-operate rather than passively consume, is already a presence. In the future we can expect what Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, called ‘feelies’ (Chapter 30) – that is, narratives, poems and plays that are multi-sensorial: felt, smelled, heard, seen. ‘Readers’, as they formerly were, will be ‘participants’. ‘Bionic literature’ will happen, one may be sure, much sooner than Huxley prophesied. We shall become ‘whole body’ readers.

  ‘New packaging’ is the third of the large ‘climatic’ changes that will refashion literature. One of the most interesting moves towards it is evident in the explosive rise of ‘fanfic’ on the web. Fanfic (fan-fiction) is created, as the name suggests, by fans who either want more of their favourite fiction, or who want more from it. It starts from the premise that works of literature are not ‘fixed’ things like stone sculptures. The old division between author and reader melts away.

  Fanfic thrives on the Web, where there is currently little regulation either of content or copyright. A huge quantity of it is produced – much more than printed fiction. There are vigorous growth areas around classic fiction: as I write, ‘The Republic of Pemberley’ website, dedicated to ‘obsessive’ lovers of Jane Austen, has a ‘Bits of Ivory’ annex in which fans devise sequels to the six novels. Fanfic is not limited to works that are out of copyright. Whole alternative versions of works such as The Lord of the Rings have been generated. A lot of fanfic is poor stuff, but some of it is as good as anything you'll find in print.

  It is now not unknown for novels that go on to be bestsellers, or otherwise successful, to originate as fanfic productions. As a genre, fanfic is material generated by small groups and intended for circulation among those small groups. It is not commissioned, nor is it paid for, nor is it ‘reviewed’, nor is it bought. It is not, as the term is usually applied, ‘published’. It is fiction written principally for readers who also, many of them, write it – a party where everyone joins in. Fanfic is not a commodity. It is neither commercial nor professional. It is never traded in any kind of market. In many ways, it is closer to a literary conversation – ‘talking about books’ – than to the printed word. It can also be seen as literature's return to its preprinted origins. Did the first listeners to the Odyssey, or Beowulf, or Gilgamesh ‘pay’? Probably not. Did they join in the literary fun – even suggesting improvements? Quite likely they did.

  One of the most interesting things about oral literature, which we explored earlier, is its fluidity. Like conversation it is flexible and changeable; it takes on the personality of whoever is then in charge of it. It flows, like water, over whatever environment it finds itself in.

  What this means in practice can be shown by one of the oralnarrative forms that has come down to us over the millennia: the conversational joke. If I tell you a joke, and you think it's a good one, you may well pass it on. But it will not be identical to what I originally told you. You will make it, with any number of small variations, yours – by elaborating some points, or by removing certain details. It may be improved, or it may not. But if you tell the joke, it will carry some of you in it, just as my telling will carry some of me in it. As it passes on to a third person, it will carry some of both of us. We can see something very similar in fanfic. The original fluidities (so to call them) of literature are being recovered. I find that exciting.

  Change is inevitable. To play the prophet (always a risky venture), the best thing that could happen to the future world of literature, its practitioners and participants, is that it will recover that quality of ‘togetherness’. This book has explored how, taken in its totality, literature is something communal: a dialogue with minds greater than our own; entertainingly-clothed ideas about how we should live our lives; a debate about our world, where it is going and where it should go. This kind of meeting of minds, enabled by literature, is central to our existence now. If things turn out well that meeting of minds will become more intense, more intimate, more active.

  What's the worst thing that could happen in the future? If readers were to become swamped – buried under a mass of information they could not process into knowledge – that would be very bad. But I remain hopeful, and with good reason. Literature, that wonderfully creative product of the human mind, will, in whatever new forms and adaptations it takes, forever be a part of our lives, enriching our lives. I say ours, but I should say yours – and your children's.

  Index

  Aaron's Rod (i)

  Achebe, Chinua (i)

  Adam Bede (i)

  Adorno, Theodor (i)

  Aeneid (i), (ii)

  Aeschylus (i)

  Aesop (i)

  Agnes Grey (i), (ii)

  Akhmatova, Anna (i)

  Albee, Edward (i)

  Albert (Prince Consort) (i), (ii)

  Aldus Manutius (i)

  Ali, Monica (i)

  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (i), (ii)

  All Quiet on the Western Front (i)

  American Psycho (i)

  Amis, Martin (i)

  Animal Farm (i), (ii)

  Anouilh, Jean (i)

  Antony and Cleopatra (i)

  ‘Are You Digging on My Grave?’ (i)

  Areopagitica (i)

  Aristotle (i), (ii), (iii)

  Arlen, Harold (i)

  Armstrong, Louis (i)

  Arnold, Matthew (i)

  Atwood, Margaret (i), (ii)

  Auden, W.H. (i), (ii)

  Augustus (Emperor) (i)

  Augustans (i), (ii)

  Austen, Cassandra (i)

  Austen, Henry (i)

  Austen, Jane (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii)

  Auster, Paul (i)

  ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ (i)

  Ballard, J.G. (i)

  Balzac, Honoré de (i)

  Barchester Towers (i)

  Barnes, Julian (i)

  Barthelme, Donald (i)

  Baudelaire, Charles (i), (ii), (iii)

  Baum, L. Frank (i)

  Beauvoir, Simone de (i)

  Beckett, Samuel (i), (ii), (iii)

  Beethoven, Ludwig van (i)

  Behn, Aphra (i), (ii), (iii)

  Bellamy, Edward (i)

  Bellow, Saul (i)

  Beloved (i)

  Beowulf (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)

  Berger, John (i)

  Berkeley, Bishop (i)

  Berryman, John (i)

  Between the Acts (i)

  Beyoncé (i)

  Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (i)

  Birth of a Nation (film) (i)

  Blake, William (i), (ii)

  Bleak House (i), (ii)

  Boccaccio, Giovanni (i), (ii)

  Boethius (i), (ii)

  Booker Prize (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)

  Borges, Jorge Luis (i)

  Boswell, James (i), (ii)

  Bowie, David (i)

  Bradbury, Ray (i), (ii)

  Bradstreet, Anne (i)

  Branagh, Kenneth (i)

  Brave New World (i), (ii), (iii)

  Brawne, Fanny (i)

  ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ (i)

  Brecht, Bertolt (i)

  The Bride of Lammermoor (i)

  Bridges, Robert (i), (ii)

  Bright Star (film) (i)

  ‘Bright Star’ (poem) (i)

  Brod, Max (i)

  Brontë, Anne (i)

  Brontë, Branwell (i)

  Brontë, Charlotte (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)

  Brontë, Emily (i), (ii), (iii)

  Brontë, Patrick (i)

  Brooke, Rupert (i), (ii)

  The Brothers Karamazov (i)

  Brown, Dan (i), (ii)

  Bunyan, John (i), (ii), (iii)

  Burgess, Anthony (i)

&n
bsp; Burns, Robert (i), (ii)

  Byatt, A.S. (i), (ii)

  Byron, Lord (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)

  Calvino, Italo (i)

  Cameron, James (i)

  Camus, Albert (i), (ii)

  Cancer Ward (i)

  Candide (i)

  canon (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)

  The Canterbury Tales (i), (ii), (iii)

  The Caretaker (i)

  Carroll, Lewis (i), (ii)

  Carter, Angela (i)

  The Castle (i)

  The Catcher in the Rye (i)

  Cats (musical) (i)

  The Cave (i)

  Caxton, William (i), (ii)

  censorship (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)