The paragone, the contest between the arts, is an ancient tradition. The term is first used by da Vinci, but like most such things it goes back (at least) to Plato. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoon (1766), which details the struggle between word and image, is the archetype of the form. Now, it seems, we have a new paragone on our hands: word and game, or if you prefer, the interactive image. Witness the following, from an article entitled “It’s No Contest” in the Outlook section of the Washington Post (free registration required):
I’ve known for a long time that a lot of the boys in my English classes are more interested in connecting with their Xboxes in the evening than with the next three chapters of Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon.” But ever since I observed their mounting hysteria over last month’s “premiere” of Halo 2, the new combat game from Microsoft, I’ve been trying to find out what’s behind the lure of video games. As the boys I teach have endeavored to enlighten me, I haven’t known whether to laugh, cry, or go find a new job. What they told me has me wondering how what I teach can possibly compete with the fast-paced razzle-dazzle of this ever-evolving entertainment form and worrying about the young guys who spend so much time divorced from reality and the life of the mind as they zap away the hours before their video screens.
It’s not the most profound thing I’ve read on the subject, but it does prompt some responses, the first of which is that all of this is immediately apropos of what was discussed at the Reading at Risk? session. Second, in the article, the author makes a gesture toward the neuroscience that backs up some of the more Sven Birkerts-like laments for the loss of “deep reading.” We need to see a lot more of that. Not that our pokings and probings of the brain are the final authority on such matters, but (and this is a point Kari makes often) contemporary cognitive science needs to be part of any serious conversation about attention and imagination.
The author, of course, is a teacher of English (secondary school or college, I’m not sure which). I’m not thrilled to see members of my profession out flogging Grand Theft Auto and even Halo 2 with All the Pretty Horses and The Song of Solomon. Not sure where that’s going to get us, other than contributing to an image of literature as something like eating your vegetables (“aw, Mom . . . but there’s icing on the Xbox!”) I think there’s a lot of room for advocacy and public education here, both by individuals and by groups like the Electronic Literature Organization. We need to begin to articulate a middle ground between Halo 2 and Shakespeare for an audience that doesn’t yet receive the MIT Press catalog. People need smart, accessible, and yes, cool examples of interactive narrative. For the masses. Right here, right now.
But we also need more. Robert Pinksy will be speaking on campus tomorrow. Pinsky, as some will know, is the author of an electronic novel (interactive fiction) called Mindwheel, from 1984. He’s also one of the most famous living American poets. What if he had continued producing electronic literature? What if electronic (or procedural) literature was no longer segregated by its medium (though we always impose our segreations, don’t we? Witness my characterization of Pinsky as an American poet, for example). What if new media simply became a part of what writers and artists did, not something special or new? Perhaps the paragone would collapse before it even got going. Move along, nothing to see here. No contest after all.
Posted by mgk at December 7, 2004 11:47 AM"contemporary cognitive science needs to be part of any serious conversation about attention and imagination."
Get me and Marc started on this sometime. We will make a grown man cry.
Actually, you have probably heard Marc's take on this. Mine boils down to the following: "When you read something it freakin' CHANGES YOUR BRAIN, physically, and why does everybody not therefore think this that the brain is the A #1 most important thing for us to pay attention to if we're going to talk about text or literature WHY WHY WHY?"
Posted by: Jess at December 7, 2004 05:38 PM | Link to CommentHere's another well-known American novelist doing e-lit - http://ninthletter.art.uiuc.edu/FA/FA05/ - unfortunately it's rather banal.
Posted by: Jill at December 8, 2004 04:56 PM | Link to CommentOne might even argue that games are in and of themselves paragone battlegrounds:
http://misc.wordherders.net/archives/002578.html#6672
The conflict of image, text, and sound contributes to the difficulty in developing an effective taxonomy for games (a genre question as much as anything, perhaps), but also might explain their appeal.
Add, of course, that elusive new art: Interactivity (or Immersion, or Configuration, or Agency, or ...).