http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/audiobooks-listeners-travel
The above link leads to a Guardian piece by Mark Lawson, where he argues – sorry, let me rephrase that – he states that audiobooks infantilise the reader. Novels should be read in silence. Note the use of ‘should’, like a prissy TV chef insisting on the use of only the finest olive oil. Many commenters seem to think the piece is pompous elitist rubbish, and I agree. The pick of the comments – I felt – was this:
The cultural attitude which underlies this post demeans the experience of literature almost as much as a refusal to read at all. Art is not an obligation or a test – it is a bounty, it’s an enrichment of life. It’s not about proving who you are to other people. The middle class British attitude that the consumption of literature is a social status performance is destructive and philistine. It kills Art.
(alisonp)
It reminded me of earlier pieces in the Guardian which bemoaned the perceived decline of appreciation of classical music in the young (can’t we trust kids to find the music they want to listen to?), and another which spoke warmly of a project designed to get young people ‘off the streets’ (ghastly phrase) and teach them to play the cello. I wondered if such praise would be showered on a project which taught kids to play the guitar.
But this snobbery is just a symptom of the wider disease in national newspapers. Twenty years ago such pieces would not have provoked such fury in me.
Wikipedia has changed everything. This is an enormously useful site which is based on the idea that you cannot trust a word it says. This is the whole point, although some consider it to be its biggest flaw. The thing is – we should never trust anything we read or hear. I was brought up in a country where the teachers told me that black people were not designed by God to rule, and where the history textbooks – years later – were revealed to be a collection of self-serving lies. So I caught on pretty early that a lot of what important looking people say can be total nonsense. Remember that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens because he was the only one who knew he knew nothing.
What Wikipedia and other collaborative online projects teach us is that there is no one authority who decides on the truth. The best we can do is muddle towards a consensus. And newspaper columnists don’t seem to have noticed that they are wearing the Emperor’s new clothes – we no longer look to them to be the arbiters of taste or truth. We are beginning to have the self confidence to enjoy what we enjoy – and hopefully respect the fact that some people enjoy other things – without that making us in some way superior.
