Is nothing sacrosanct?

CHRIS BENNETT muses on a future without books.

I SUPPOSE it had to happen. I read this week about the latest development in the arcane world of the eBook.

The boffins have now added a soundtrack to the device, which monitors your reading speed and provides noises at the appropriate point. I kid you not.

A host of squiggly little reactions accosted what I am pleased to call my brain.

Noises off? Hasn’t someone, somewhere, missed the point?

There are good books and bad books. There are no pornographic books in my view and that of many others: only the eye of the beholder provide that.

And it is this very minds eye, this astonishing manufacturer of images, sounds, concepts; this interpreter of complex little symbols into vast stretches of its own imagination that has now been told it needs help. Really?

The whole point of reading is that, assuming the material is skilfully and lucidly written, the brain will use the words to interpret everything that is written. Should Jane Austen describe a scene in which there is a clap of thunder very few of us would need to actually hear the sound of thunder. If we did it would very likely destroy the continuity of our images and the line of the story. Reading is best done in silence.

In the days when I taught reading and writing for radio I particularly enjoyed the way in which my colleagues were slightly startled when I explained why, as a medium, radio was so superior to television. In essence, what I said was this:

The processes of reading the written word, hearing the spoken word and writing the words themselves are closely related. Radio is a refined form of reading, with one remarkable change to the process. Listening to the radio, be it music or speech, allows you to occupy your hands with something else, something familiar with which you are comfortable. You cannot do this reading a book.

It might be knitting in the case of a talented woman, or model building, cooking or any number of other activities in which the brain is able to concentrate on the radio and at the same time supervise repetitive tasks which bring pleasure. All the images conjured up by the words on the radio, be they news, talks or drama or sport, will be supplied effortlessly to the mind.

This is why the mind fundis of today tell us that radio is companionship, whereas television is distraction. Radio is interactive, and so is reading. In Britain radio listenership has grown in leaps and bounds over the past two decades. When I was a newsreader on the BBC World Service in the 1960s the chief announcer (I think the august post was held by John Snagge) rejoiced in the title Head of the Spoken Word. Dare I say that says everything.

The very idea of reading a book (and, by the way, I quite like the iPad and the Kindle) in which I hear the sounds of a waterfall, a train, cows bleating or sheep mooing would drive me nuts. Yes, I know cows moo and sheep bleat; I was just making sure you were paying attention.

I sometimes fear that the encouragement of reading among the cellphone obsessed, Internet enslaved yoof of today is a lost battle.

CB

9/9/11