I'd never heard of Mockingbird, which surprised me a little because it's good.
It surprised me a lot that I hadn't heard of Walter Tevis because three of his six novels are famous on film--a curious mix:
The Hustler (1959; 1961 movie with Paul Newman)
The Man Who Fell to Earth, (1963; movie starring David Bowie 1976),
and The Queen's Gambit (Netflix series, 2020)
Mockingbird has never been filmed. With the success of the Queen's Gambit, maybe now it will be.
It’s a hopeful story set in a dystopian future where robots do everything and a drugged humanity has forgotten how to read, or that reading even exists.
Asked if a decline in literacy in America had inspired his plot line, Tevis said:
"My private experience as an English teacher has been that Americans don’t read books. They didn’t read books in 1949 when I started teaching. They don’t read books now [1981].
Television did make a difference. It deepened the slack of the slackjaws and gave another great quantity of garbage for people to fill their lives with. But, you know, there was other garbage around before television.
Mockingbird does sometimes, I think, weaken into an attack solely on television and on the modern world, and “weaken” I say, because I’m not completely convinced of all those things that I say.
But what I am convinced of is that it is very bad for people to find substitutes for living their lives, and that’s what I hope I do say, and say well, from time to time in the book.
--"An Interview with Walter Tevis", 1981, Brick Magazine https://brickmag.com/an-interview-with-walter-tevis/
"they didn't read then and they don't read now". That is so sad. Reading makes you think and imagine, even if one only reads fiction as I do, it still stirs the imagination. I know plenty of people who haven't read a book since they finished school and only read books at school because they were made to.
ReplyDeleteThat dystopia makes me think of Infinite Jest. Also WALL-E.
ReplyDeleteSocial media is full of outrage every summer from incoming college students who are expected to read a book for one book/one campus activities. Sad to say that their English courses will often be the only courses that require the reading of books. "Study guides" and professors who "outline" a textbook are often what they'll find in other fields of study. My sources here are students themselves over many years of teaching.
And even when students value something they’ve read, they tend to describe their experience in terms of coercion. As River said, “made to.” “She made us read,” or more gently, “He had us read,” &c.
It’s very bad for people to find substitutes for living their lives...I feel like this has been my struggle for years...up and down, ever since my PTSD kicked up...I wish I could figure out how to stay in my life...
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