So...
I'd like to revisit an old question I posed a while back, that nobody responded to at the time. (Maybe it's a really crappy question that only I think is a good one, ha.) Would Moby Dick have been better if it had been written today -- with word processors and such technology?
I can't take credit for the question, it came from Wired magazine a few months back. But I thought it was an interesting question to pose to the people who visit here.
And yes, I'm still kind of under the weather. So I have gotten absolutely nothing accomplished this week. Other than going to work, and I'd argue that I've done that badly. I love fall... except for the fact that I seem to get some nasty sinus infection every single year!
Hope everybody's making some progress... and enjoying Halloween Week!
LLB
I can't take credit for the question, it came from Wired magazine a few months back. But I thought it was an interesting question to pose to the people who visit here.
And yes, I'm still kind of under the weather. So I have gotten absolutely nothing accomplished this week. Other than going to work, and I'd argue that I've done that badly. I love fall... except for the fact that I seem to get some nasty sinus infection every single year!
Hope everybody's making some progress... and enjoying Halloween Week!
LLB
posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:29 PM
4 Comments:
I don't know if technology would make a difference, in the case of "Moby Dick". It's such an enormous and byzantine creation, I don't know if anyone would write it today. Can you imagine trying to pitch it to an agent or publisher? The novel had a difficult time in its own day, I am not sure how it would be received, outside of the classroom, in our own age.
brian
Ah, yes, good point. Interesting to think about... how tastes change.
The flow of it might be different. It's kind of a rambling book (I mean this in a good way) and the tech mixed with the market and the pressure of editors might force Melville to streamline parts of it. If Melville lived now I think he probably would still write Moby, but it would take a much different shape.
The only one I can think of who does things quite like Melville is Thomas Pynchon.
Hey Hebdomeros,
True, true. I think most of us armed with spell check, grammar check, and easy ways to cut, paste, and reassess are less likely to ramble on forever. I have never read Pynchon. Actually, I've never read Moby Dick either. (Embarrassing, isn't it!) It would be an interesting thought, though, what some authors of the classics might have done (or not done) with the use of technology.
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