What a Scanner Sees
To celebrate the end of the semester (and to cure a stubborn case of writer’s block), I visited some friends at FSU for a change of scenery. While I was there, we watched A Scanner Darkly, a film based on the dystopian science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. One quote in particular—from which the novel takes its title—got me thinking:
“What does a scanner see?” he asked himself. “I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly?”
As it happens, writing is a common side effect of thinking, and what resulted was a question: Is the internet becoming detrimental to literature? With self-publishing and social networking, writers can circulate their work at any time they choose and easily promote it. In the aforementioned quote from A Scanner Darkly, the word “scanner” refers to mechanical devices, not readers. But as individuals living in the Digital Age (and therefore drowning in an overflow of blogs, tweets, texts, and Facebook statuses), it can be argued that readers have become scanners as a result of having so much published text to sift through. Dueling blog posts by Jeff Goins and Daniel Swensen might provide some insight into the evolution of literature and its audiences.
Jeff Goins makes that claim in his article, “Why The Hunger Games Is the Future of Writing,” advising writers to mimic Suzanne Collins’s “short, terse” prose because “we live in a world of distractions,” and “most people are reading at the attention level of a sixth grader.” Goins proposes that in order to adapt to how people read, we must change the way we write. Sounds logical enough. But is literature really going to mimic The Hunger Games’ simplistic brevity, just to satisfy our increasingly divided attentions? Our “world of distractions” is mostly connected through social media. At the touch of a button, anyone’s work can become The Latest Thing (just like A Scanner Darkly’s “holo-scanners”) practically overnight. In his rebuttal article, “Why Hunger Games Isn’t the Future of Writing,” Daniel Swensen contests Goins’s claim:
Hunger Games isn’t the future. It’s now. It’s the Latest Big Thing. The market is already flooded with YA titles trying to cash in on the success of Twilight, and editors and agents are plumb sick of it. Thanks to the success of the book and the movie adaptation, soon the market will be flooded with YA titles trying to cash in on the success of Hunger Games, and editors and agents will be sick of that. You don’t embrace the future by imitating the last known success.
As Swensen mentions, the instant gratification bred from this Click-the-Link-and-Presto! culture has created a bit of a gold rush. Writers hastily produce work and publish it, hoping a similar idea doesn’t get popular first. I can’t count how many times I had to re-work a manuscript because I spotted a novel mocking me from the New Releases shelf at Barnes and Noble, sporting a similar concept along with its glossy cover. Unfortunately, this gold rush opens the door for under-developed stories and simplistic writing trying to cash-in on the latest trend. Anyone who has seen Barnes and Noble’s Paranormal Romance section and its cornucopia of uninspired Twilight knock-offs will know what I mean. One has to wonder: will these trends have a lasting effect on literature? They certainly shouldn’t be ignored. These trends have relevance because they not only indicate popular topics, but how our culture perceives them. For example, in the wake ofThe Hunger Games’ success, not only is there an abundance of dystopian books lining the shelves, but most of their narratives are first-person, present-tense, mimicking Collins’s series. Along with the success of social-networking, this trend indicates that as a culture, we are obsessed with knowing one another’s thoughts and opinions as soon as they happen.
Swensen states that “the key to maintaining reader interest” in this distracted world is “Good writing. Not big fonts, short sentences, or simplistic storylines.” But what Swensen neglects to address is that short sentences are capable of being considered “good writing,” provided they are thoughtfully crafted, a well-known example being McCarthy’s The Road. Simple prose can be powerful because, as Goins points out, we live in a world of distractions. We are bombarded with tweets and statuses and blog post drivel like this every day. With so much to read, what captures a reader’s attention, from the most flippant to the most analytical, is unapologetic authenticity.
According to Jeff Goins, “edgy writing rings true” and resonates with readers. But I think the inverse of that statement is more accurate. The truth can be edgy, and that’s what makes it so fascinating. Writers have the power to subject their fictional characters to otherwise unethical or implausible social experiments. Dystopias like the ones portrayed in The Hunger Games, The Road and A Scanner Darkly are all examples. Such tales present us with a wealth of profoundly thought-provoking situations that generate important discussions for the progression of humankind.
Regardless of whether it is fiction or nonfiction, more than short or winding sentences, what we crave is substance. It doesn’t matter if that truth is beautiful or hideous. The Digital Age doesn’t mark the beginning of a literary apocalypse because, in the long run, literature won’t be stylistically altered by trends like The Hunger Games. Trends are fickle, but authenticity endures.
Writers need to remember that, to earn a reader’s attention, their prose must contain truth; one which allows the reader to perceive something “clearly rather than darkly.”
