George, Millie, everyone
I saw this on the if:book website yesterday - a quote from Gautier, 1834:
The book has been dead for a long time
"The newspaper kills the book, as the book has killed architecture, and
as artillery has killed courage and muscular strength. We are not aware of
what pleasures newspapers deprive us. They rob everything of its virginity;
owing to them we can have nothing of our own, and cannot possess a book all
to ourselves; they rob you of surprise at the theatre, and tell you all the
catastrophes beforehand; they take away from you the pleasure of tattling,
chattering, gossiping and slandering, of composing a piece of news or
hawking a true one for a week through all the drawing-rooms of society. They
intone their ready-made judgments to us, whether we want them or not, and
prepossess us against things that we should like; it is owing to them that
the dealers in phosphorus boxes, if only they have a little memory, chatter
about literature as nonsensically as country Academicians; it is also owing
to them that all day long, instead of artless ideas or individual stupidity,
we hear half-digested scraps of newspaper which resemble omelettes raw on
one side and burnt on the other, and that we are pitilessly surfeited with
news two or three hours old and already known to infants at the breast;
brandy drinkers and file and rasp swallowers, who have ceased to find any
flavour in the most generous wines, and cannot apprehend their flowery and
fragrant bouquet."
(from Theophile Gautier's preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, May 1834)
Posted by dan visel at July 9, 2005 01:06 PM | file under: Media Consumption
Technorati tags: books newspapers misoneism blogs media forms
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/07/the_book_has_be.html
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