Our Yelping Times

I've been thinking lately about how the Internet and social media have empowered us all in some striking ways--some of which are positive. Research now is so much easier than it used to be. When I was writing books about Jack London and The Call of the Wild in the 80s and 90s, I had to go places--to libraries and archives to see the photographs and documents I needed.

One example: I went to the special collections in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley (Calif.) to see their Klondike and Jack London photos. This meant an airplane ticket, a car rental, some motel nights, etc. And it was not long after that before all those photographs were online; I could have examined them on my iPad at the coffee shop. (And saved a few bucks in the process.)

But we're all aware, of course, of the Dark Side of the Web--the speed-of-light spreading of falsehood, of slander, of sinister things, of rage--all over the world. Of course, goodness spreads just as quickly but somehow seems far less interesting to us than scandal and defamatory assaults on individuals and institutions.

Also employing these digital assassination tools are sites that allow anyone--and I mean anyone--to comment on, well, just about anything. Qualifications to criticize be damned.

You can go online and trash your physician, your teachers, your local restaurants, a book you read, a concert you attended--hell, just about anything. (All anonymously, of course.) You can use the same sites to praise people and institutions--but who reads that? Or wants to read that? Far more fun to see someone/something shredded rather than reassembled.

As a long-time book-reviewer (I published my first in 1999 and since then have done nearly 2000 reviews for Kirkus Reviews and the Cleveland Plain Dealer), I have, of course, noticed how the opinions of the traditional (i.e., qualified) reviewers in the arts have declined in recent years--surrendering to the opinions of noisy others (who may or may not be qualified).

During the years I was growing up, I enjoyed reading in the newspapers (remember them?) the commentaries on the sports pages (about the only pages I read back then), commentaries offered by writers clearly competent and experienced.

Later (more ... mature!), I loved reading reviews of books and films and plays and concerts and ... My older brother, who'd loved and studied classical music from earliest boyhood, later became the classical music critic for the Boston Globe for about thirty years. No doubt in my mind: I'd grown up in the house where he lived; I knew what he'd done to prepare for such a gig (though he wasn't really preparing for it in the traditional sense--he was just loving and learning and learning and loving classical music).

I was a desultory reader in my school days (though I did read Moby-Dick in high school study hall--but I also read trashy Westerns in that same study hall). But a high school teacher (Mr. Brunelle) and a couple of college professors (especially Dr. Abe Ravitz), tightened that light bulb in my head that was so loose it only flickered--and I soon became the Insane Reader that I am now.

Over the years, though, I learned to decline to review books that I felt incompetent to evaluate. (I did this only a couple of weeks ago, in fact.) Authors, I know, crave critics who know what they're talking about (though, of course, most of them, at least now and then, despise what some critics think and say).

The Internet now is awash with opinions about books--many (most?) of them by people whose only qualification is that they have an opinion. (We're not even certain that they've actually read the book.) Amazon, for example, allows anyone who registers with them to post reviews. And I've been approached more than once by writers who asked me to post an Amazon review for them. (I've done so only once--and only because I really admired both the writer and his/her new book.)

As a result, book pages and sections in major newspapers have declined--probably permanently. (There are, of course, numerous other reasons for the fall of newsprint.)

Lots of people have observed (in numerous contexts) about our "snowflake society"--about our current capacity to melt--and then boil--rapidly. Teachers of literature, it seems, must now issue "trigger warnings" lest some sensitive student be offended by, oh, some crazy guy trying to kill a poor white whale. Save the whales!

But hell, I've learned that one of the great joys of reading is encountering things that make me uncomfortable. That's one way we learn, you know? We come across something confusing or disturbing; we think about it; we learn, finding a place to fit it into our evolving conception of the world.

But not these days, I guess. Instead we insist on banning all discomfort. Sticking to what we already know and already think.

And so it was, last night, reading The Mirror and the Light (2020) the third volume of Hilary Mantel's superb trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, et al., I was jarred upright by this (the point-of-view is Cromwell's):

"But he thinks, no, none of us can stand anything. Scrape our skin, and beneath is an infant, howling" (286).

And these days--too often (far too often)--the howling infants drown out the reasonable, thoughtful adults.