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A few weeks ago a 2001 press conference with Bob Dylan emerged on youtube. Dylan, usually cagey and recalcitrant with reporters, is unusually earnest in the interview. He says a lot about his career and his Love and Theft album, which he was promoting at the time. You can check out a clip above, and the interview’s other five segments can be found on youtube. The reason I choose to bring this to the attention of the blog is that in the interview Dylan makes some interesting comments about the state of literature in America, and in particular some comments about how digital media is affecting the ways we feel. The comments, which I’ll outline below, are particularly relevant after yesterday’s massacre at the Boston Marathon, but I’ll leave that connection to your own reflections – we’ve all seen coverage of that tragedy, and I don’t want to add to the noise. As the version of Bob Dylan who appeared on the day of that interview might suggest, this post isn’t a work of art and thus I have no business telling you how to feel.

(Image credit: brainpickings.org)

Dylan’s comments on literature and the media come after a reporter asked him if there were any new writers he was particularly excited about. After a brief moment of thought Dylan says he “just doesn’t think there are any…we’re living in a different time. The media is all-pervasive. What can a writer think to write that you don’t see every day in the newspaper or on television?” Many of us would disagree with the notion that there aren’t any new writers worth caring about. Few amongst us wouldn’t sing the praises of Zadie Smith or Dave Eggers. Just last week I picked up a copy of Chris Ware’s Building Stories, and I can confidently say it’s a work of genius. It’s certainly worth finding a copy of. So I think I chalk the first part of that comment up as the lament of an older generation. (Ibid Dylan’s later comments on there being no media in late-nineteenth century France.) But nevertheless, despite the factually incorrect way that Dylan frames his argument, I still think he’s on to something. A reporter responds to all this by asking whether “there are [still] emotions that need to be expressed,” and this spurs the heart of Dylan’s argument. “Yeah,” Dylan responds, “but the media’s moving people’s emotions anyway.”

(Image credit: quarterlyconversation.com)

I thought this was a really interesting concept. When I reflect on my own reading or talk to friends who keep up with contemporary literature, there does seem to be a general sense that things have changed. Writers certainly don’t have the cultural heft they once did. Leo Tolstoy and Mark Twain had a profound reach in their day. Today people like David Foster Wallace are certainly considered influential, but that influence is reserved for a much less substantial audience than what Tolstoy or Twain enjoyed. Every serious reader I know has their own list of explanations. Some blame e-readers, some blame TV, some blame declining education standards. Who’s to say? Dylan’s point that other media tell us how to feel about our world is novel and valid. At its heart, I guess, is something about effort. Literature requires us to be active participants, while certain new media make it all too easy to be passive viewers. Some would probably say there are other valuable narratives superseding the novel, but that’s not what Dylan’s talking about.