Re: Too much content?

> 2. Too much content?
>     Posted by: "bczygan" bczygan-/[email protected] bczygan
>     Date: Sat Jun 27, 2009 4:02 pm ((PDT))
>
> Is it just me in my old age?....but doesn't there seem to be too  
> much content, too many channels, too many authors, too many types  
> of media chasing my very finite time? I feel hammered. Is there  
> really a market for all this? Can I consume enough to support it  
> all? When will the media market collapse?

When I was a kid, I figured that eventually I'd read all the books in  
the local public library. Now I am in my sixties, I read perhaps one  
to three books a week, the local public library has 40,000 of 'em, I  
don't expect to live past age 120 or so. I can do the math.

The very freshness of _books themselves_ does wear out. The days when  
I truly and literally lost consciousness of my surroundings, just  
about sank into the pages of a book, for hours on end--as my usual  
response to even a fairly good book--are long gone. Everyone will  
have different examples, but the impact of H. G. Wells' _The Time  
Machine_ at age nine was--do I dare say this aloud, it's sooooo  
geeky--comparable in impact to the first time I had sex.

Books still grab me, they still reach me, but it's not the same.

The way I know it's not the same is that when I played my first text  
adventure game, the original Crowther-Woods Colossal Cave adventure,  
circa the late 1970s, and wondered "what would happen if I waved the  
rod," typed ">WAVE ROD," and read the response "A CRYSTAL BRIDGE NOW  
SPANS THE CHASM," I was stunned. I realized _at the time_ that what  
had happened was that I had just re-experienced the impact that books  
had on me in my pre-teen days, but which had already started to fade  
in early adulthood.

No, it's not that they aren't still writing good books. Rather late,  
I've finally discovered Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books which  
are, I think, about as good as anything that was being written during  
the 1960s or the 1930s or the 1800s. But I don't literally forget  
where I am when I read them, and so far I've never stayed up past 1  
a.m. to finish one of them.

When I read books, I know too many of the writing tricks. I can't  
really suspend disbelief. There's always a little critical voice  
whispering into my left ear. I read _The Lord of the Rings_ before  
there were any paperback editions and before they were widely known.  
They were a great moment in my reading history, and probably had as  
much impact from a book as I ever experienced in adulthood. But even  
so, when Gandalf fights the Balrog and falls into the chasm, some  
part of me said "Hmmm... I wonder whether we've really seen the last  
of Gandalf."

"Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness  
of the flesh."



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