The Case Against Books: A Polemic

It is common knowledge that I don't like reading.  In my life, this distaste for reading has caused quite a number of problems.  The main one being that I love knowing stuff.  In particular, I love knowing a lot of rather nerdy and esoteric stuff that, it seems, tends to be recorded predominantly in long books written in excruciatingly boring styles.  In addition to (or, perhaps, more likely, as a result of) being a particularly slow and ineffective reader, I find it very hard to sustain interest even in those books that would seem to have been tailor-made to suit my tastes.  I do typically find it easier to read non-fiction than fiction, but overall, reading is not my thing.  

You know what I do love, though?  Television.  Oh man, I love it so much.  So much, that I am now about to embark on the difficult task of presenting an argument for why TV is, to put it bluntly, just better than books.  Now, before you work yourself up into some type of outrage-induced anaphylaxis, hear me out.  Of course there are "good" things about books, blah blah blah, but everyone talks about how good books are.  In my opinion, books are so often celebrated by people in positions of great power and influence (teachers, parents, Oprah, pop artists, rappers, even the TV tells you to read...), that they are getting a little big for their britches.  It's time someone took books down a peg.

So, without further ado, here goes nothing...

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As a book I had to read in college for a class on television so aptly explained (Is that ironic?  Both that I am quoting a book about not liking books, and that I read a book for a class about television?  Is anything ironic anymore?), many people prefer to watch TV than read books because "books are slow and take unpredictable amounts of energy to comprehend."

When you watch TV, you know what you're getting yourself into.  Even before you start watching a program, you know when it will end.  And, thanks to the consistency of narrative conventions across a wide breadth of television programming, you even know approximately when any given episode will introduce its story's conflict, reach its climax, and ultimately find its resolution.  This creates, for television viewers, feelings of empowerment and control.  Coupled with the authority assigned to the viewer through the all-powerful remote control (...don't get me started on the wonders of DV-R...), the viewer clearly holds a dominant position in his or her relationship with the television itself.  

This position of viewer dominance is further supported by the fact that watching television is not mutually exclusive to doing other things.  You can make dinner, play games, write clever blog posts, or any number of household activities while watching TV.  In this way, turning on the television can be seen as adding to or complimenting one's lifestyle.  The viewer again, clearly holds a position of relative superiority to the television, as her or she can continue doing a variety of other things, while the television patiently must continue to "serve" its viewers whether or not they are actually watching.

This is not true of the relationship between reader and book.  Of course, one has the power to put a book down (...or rip it apart and violently hurl the torn sections across a crowded college library, as I once did when, after hours of studying for a history of modern art exam, I came upon Robert Smithson's suggestion that: "The order and disorder of the fourth dimension could be set between laughter and crystal-structure, as a device for unlimited speculation"... Seriously?  Seriously?? What the does that even mean? And, more importantly, why am I being forced to read to some dude's masturbatory romp into what I can only assume is a lame attempt at creating some particularly second-rate post-modern existentialist theory?). But short of quitting before the end, the reader rarely, if ever, knows how long it is going to take to finish a book before they have begun reading it.  This means that agreeing to read a book is agreeing to devote however many hours it takes to get through it -- a length of time that is determined as much by the book itself as by the reader.  Furthermore, even if a reader gives this time to a book willingly, he or she still enters into the relationship unable to predict how long it will take for the story to reach its various milestones.  You see, narrative conventions in books vary much more than those in television.  

Finally, it is virtually impossible to do anything else while reading a book.  Have you ever tried to fold laundry with a book in your hands?  How about playing a game of cards?  The only things you can actually do while reading are go to the bathroom, wait for something, and ride the subway.  Books freely and unapologetically claim a monopoly over your time without thinking twice about what other stuff you might have going on -- and, once committed to finding out what a book has to say, there is little, if anything you can do about it.  Together, these factors posit the book's power as equal, if not superior, to that of the reader.  

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of some book telling me what to do.  I don't need some smug book mocking me, saying that if I want to know what it has to say I have to disconnect from the rest of my life, that it's going to take as long as it takes, and that I can't do anything about it.  Books are jerks.  

Well, you listen to me, books ... You have either 30 minutes or 1 hour to get your point across in a compelling and fast-paced way, or I'm out.  Television is way more humble than books because it knows who it answers to and respects the value of your time.  Books think they're better than you.  Enough is enough.