Can books endure in a 140-character world?

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Millennial Generation was born into a world where John Lennon has always been a murder victim and “Greed is good” Gordon Gekko, an anti-folk hero. Perhaps this explains our obsession with social media. The forces of darkness have a hell of a time in an era where every action can be instantaneously shared around the world before being stored in an elephantine server mind. This obliterating power of unvarnished truth is so strong that only a few die-hard holdouts of old-school oppression — Syria and North Korea — remain. This year, the millennials have started turning 30. What the millennials have created with social media is an incredibly rich and stylish archive of ephemeral moments. But we can't fully illuminate the dark avenues of human nature solely with Instagram. So how do we parse our humanity in an age where "friend" is a verb?

Literature, whether it's shouted over a campfire, bound in vellum or displayed on a touchscreen, is the way we understand one another on a meaningful level. However, the publishing industry has been feeling a bit glum lately. For the uninitiated, a slow-building, 500-page book that is not about vampires has the entertainment appeal of a sackcloth full of cuneiform tablets.

Salon.com > Millennial Generation

Can books endure in a 140-character world?