At age 76, novelist Philip Roth is one of the grand old men of the art world.  That’s why, when he speaks, people listen.  Even if he says completely incompetent and foolish, like when he says that the novel is dying out.  Here’s the crux of his argument.

“The book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete [in the] beginning with the movie screen. It couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen,” Roth said. “Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn’t measure up.”

Now is that true?  I don’t know; maybe.  The novel has been dying out for over 100 years now.  Radio was going to kill it.  TV was going to kill it.  Movies were going to kill it.  Yet Twilight and Harry Potter and thousands of other books are selling millions of copies!  Now, the method of printing on paper might be in trouble, but people are always going to find something to read, either in hard copy or on an e-reader.

Image: io9

Tags: literacy, novels, books, philip roth, is the novel dead, the future of the novel, reading, paper books versus ebooks, kindle

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