The World Between Two Covers
by Ann Morgan
(Liverlight, W.W. Norton, New York, 2015)
The volume of printed words in the world has always been unreadable by a single individual, almost from the word go.
Page 10.
Devouring it all, or trying to have, as Marx and Engels put it with typically daunting earnestness, ‘intercourse in every direction’, has always been an impossible fantasy.
Page 10.
From endorsement quotes by comparable writers on the jacket, to taster chapters for similar works at the back, we are constantly encouraged to read things similar to the stories we have already read. If we buy a book on Amazon, we are told what other people who bought that title also went for - and then we get emails about it too.
Page 13.
The prospect of seeking out stories from further afield feels a bit like being asked to abandon the bright supermarket aisles where everything is arranged just as we like ti to forage for literary sustenance in the local park.
Page 14.
In many areas of Anglophone culture, to ge ignorant is somehow shameful, and many of us go to g reat lengths to avoid being exposed as poorly informed.
Page 16.
We try to avoid situations where we’re likely to find ourselves out of our depth.
Page 16.
For many people, one of the major incentives for reading books from other cultures is discovery itself. Rightly or wrongly, we tend to regard literary works as windows on other worlds. Learning about a different way of life and a different way of looking at things is part of the point of the exercise.
Page 17.
Enjoyment has an important part to play in engaging people with books.
Page 18.
The joy of reading is often what makes books travel in the first place.
Page 18.
For some, the idea that there is a right and a wrong way of reading may be enough to put them off attempting unfamiliar works altogether.
Page 20.
Usually, to read is to enter into a dialogue with a writer who is no longer there.
Page 21.
In the face of a thousand footnotes, it can be difficult to maintain enough confidence in our ability to read a story and get something out of it without someone telling us what to think every second word.
Pages 22-23.
The biggest myth that maps peddle is not the privileging of one portion of the planet over another, but the mistaken belief that it is possible for one person to stand outside the world and survey the planet and its contents objectively The mere fact of creating what seems like a god’s or alien-eye view of the world perpetuates the idea that it is possible for one person to look at the planet as an impartial observer might and that the world will stand still, peacefully and changelessly, while we do it.
Page 29.
The world and human events inherently lack meaning: meaning is conferred by human cognition.
Pages 29-30.
Our confidence in our ability to take a global view remains largely unshaken. To feel that we can look at things in this way is appealing
Page 30.
The act of looking at a m ap has the power to both play to our vanity and banish our fear of confusion. It makes us feel that we have control.
Page 30.
Even the most widely cited definitions, such as the one set out in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, are far from watertight. According to the terms of that treaty, sovereign statehood essentially boils down to having a permanent population, defined borders, a government, and the ability to have dealings with other states. You’re a state if you say you are and if the people in and around you agree.
Page 31.
The UN presents a distorted picture of global dynamics, a fudge between what is accurate and what is practicable.
Page 32.
Up until the middle of the eighteenth century, more books are thought to have been published in Chinese than in all other languages put together, the prevailing view of world literature had nothing to do with works penned in Mandarin or Cantonese.
Page 33-34.
In contrast to the mid-twentieth century, when European scholars dominated the field, the US is largely where it’s at for world literature these days, at least as far as the concept as understood by English-language speakers is concerned.
Page 37.
‘World literature’ seems to be a term that nearly everyone uses even if it doesn’t mean the same thing to all of us.
Page 39.
In order to travel beyond its milieu, it must have the ability to make its specificities meaningful and engaging to people with little knowledge of them.
Page 41.
In the same way that nations applying for membership of the UN must satisfy others of their sovereignty by conforming to certain conventions in their structure and practices, so books admitted into the sphere of ‘world literature’ often earn the accolade by communicating local truths and being distinctive in a recognisable way.
Page 42.
World literature is as much about an openness of approach, a readiness to engage and a willingness to meet halfway as it is about international value and market forces. It has as much to do with the development of a mindset as the creation of a canon.
Page 42.
Identity is a broach church that sometime has very little to do with national borders.
Pages 46-47.
Although often used interchangeably, nation and state, nationality and citizenship - and for that matter nation and culture - do not mean the same thing.
Page 47.
The correlation between languages, writing and state boundaries is loose.
Page 49.
For many celebrated writers, recognition in other parts of the world only serves to underline how unwelcome or mistrusted they are in their home nations.
Page 50.
Nations, it seems, are chary of celebrating their great artists unreservedly and often prefer to keep them at arm’s length.
Page 50.
Great authors are a great annoyance. Nations are happiest with their geniuses when they are dead.
Pages 50-51.
Nationality is first and foremost a state of mind. It is a statement of where we feel our allegiances lie.
Page 51.
For many people, demonstrating allegiance to a particular nation has moral implications.
Page 52.
Just as relationships can range from life-enhancing to toxic, so the affiliations between people and the places that have played a role in shaping their identities can vary dramatically from individual to individual.
Page 52.
Familiarity with and the ability to modulate between two or more cultures seem to be an advantage when it comes to story-telling. On close analysis, many wordsmiths turn out to be translators rather than narrators of experience, explaining one part of the world to another.
Page 53.
Once a story has gained ground, we human beings seem to prefer to work from it rather than go back to first principles.
Page 57.
We become nostalgic for places that have never existed.
Page 59.
When enough people proclaim that someone possesses a quality - whether fame, certain personality traits or a particular nationality - it can have the effect of creating a local truth. What other people say about us has considerable power to make things so.
Page 65.
The majority of us still assume a link between story and place. We still award book prizes according to region. We still think in terms of our culture’s literary heritage and we argue passionately about what defines it.
Page 66.
“It’s OK to grieve but there comes appoint where you either have to carry on or dissolve.”
Page 70.
The truth is that the odds are stacked against most books from elsewhere ever reaching us.
Page 71.
Throughout history, many of the planet’s leading wordsmiths have made no secret of the debt their writing owns to stories from elsewhere.
Page 77.
When translation works too much in one direction we all lose.
Page 79.
The business of producing books and transporting them to readers is complicated by a nation’s size, shape and location.
Page 82.
To tell stories, at least to tell the wrong kind of stories, is to threaten the pride and dignity of those around you; those who, rightly or wrongly, believe their reputation or character might somehow be compromised by association.
Page 92.
Instead of me reading the world, it seemed the world was reading me - and forcing me to rewrite the bits with which it didn’t agree.
Page 96.
As technology makes freedom of the press possible for more people than ever before some of those within the citadel of the literary establishment are adopting a siege mentality, readying the vats of boiling scorn and vitriol to pour on the heads of the advancing zombie-like masses intent on admittance.
Page 99.
The sense that English is the only medium that can broadcast ideas effectively proves deeply restrictive and even damaging.
Page 113.
It’s hard not to wonder whether ink and paper sometimes have the unintended effect of fossilising the practices they seek to preserve.
Page 123.
Across the world, wherever there is a tradition of communicating tales by methods other than writing, you’ll normally find an attendant cluster of - often Western - anthropologists, literary critics and other interested parties agonising about the best way to get what’s being said or sun down on the page.
Page 126.
The loss of a mode of speaking often means the destruction of the stories that were couched in it.
Page 127.
Roots is effectively a symbolic account of the bitter family history of many African-Americans. Whether or not it is factually accurate is almost beside the point.
Page 137.
Our minds build story as a response to existing - they scaffold our understanding according to stories - so human beings are always going to have some form of story.
Page 140.
What we know as story is part of our existence.
Page 140.
It seems likely that for as long as people have been telling stories other people have been trying to shut them up.
Page 144.
Books are often on the front line in the war of ideas.
Page 145.
Extreme cases aside, however, the truth is tht nowhere is completely censorship free. For one thing, though freedom of expression maybe a universal right, it is not an absolute one.
Page 149.
In reality, when it comes to the issue of censorship, most of us demonstrates a strange brand of doublethink. Because, as Nigel Smith writes in his Preface to Literature and Censorship, the belief that our written tradition has triumphed over different forms of repressive authority is ‘crucial to our sense of history.’
Page 150.
To some extent, we all police what we allow words to say or do to us; censorship can be in the eye of the reader too.
Page 163.
Literature is full of charades who exhibit a range of strong reactions to the imaginary experiences of others.
Page 170.
Fiction is not just a simulator of a social experience, it is a social experience.
Page 171.
The ability to empathise is an important indicator of how well someone is likely to be able to read in the first place.
Page 171.
The increased capacity for recognising and entering into the feelings of others that literature seems to foster and depend on must, many claim, have a positive influence on the way we live our lives.
Page 171.
Books seem to persist in making things happen.
Page 173.
This belief in the power of books to influence people seems to be one of the few things pretty much all readers agree on.
Page 174.
The space that stories grant us, by allowing us to bail out some of the emotional and logistical paraphernalia we carry with us in the real world, makes extraordinary things possible.
Page 179.
Because books cast us in a creative role they enrich and broaden who we are.
Page 179.
Texts act upon us every bit as much as we act upon them. They work, grab the reader, tug at the heartstrings and call forth the emotions.
Page 181.
Like subjects giving ourselves over into the hands of a skilled hypnotist, we submit to having our thoughts tampered with then we read.
Page 181.
What we now know as Hebbian learning - simplistically explained as brain cells firing and wiring together in response to stimuli - takes place as we read and the potential to develop new patterns in our thinking.
Page 181.
Within certain limits, books have the power to shape us. Stories can make us who we are.
Page 182.
Stories, it seems, truly can be life changing.
Page 182.
Just as texts appear to have power to formulate new pathways in our brains, so they can equally reinforce and shore up what is already there. Prejudices and ideologies can be bolstered by stories that flatter them and the boundaries of the worlds we live in can be hammered all the more firmly into place by books that simply replay familiar accounts of who and what we are.
Page 182.
It’s likely that much of the reading material with which we are surrounded works by reassuring rather than challenging us, using accepted formulas communicated to us before we even open the first page.
Page 182.
It is the repeated process of connection with a variety of texts over a long period that can make a difference, instead of what one story can do on its own.
Page 183.
What much of the world declares about political situations in other parts of the planet often bears very little relation to the experience of the people living there.
Page 188.
Centuries before the term ‘culture shock’ came into play, many of the world’s best stories revolved around journeys to distant places and the success - or otherwise - of the protagonists in fitting in there.
Page 194.
Watching action unfold along familiar lines, yet with variation inside understood limits is satisfying. It reassures us that the world remains as we believe it to be: ordered according to a set of well-known rules, still with the potential to surprise and delight us, but not too much.
Page 197.
Differences and surprised have to play out within the range our brains are equipped to operate in - again calibrated according to what we have been exposed to previously - or else we struggle.
Page 197.
As in real life, so with reading: the most extreme cases of literary culture shock occur when you find yourself in a story that operates inside a value system markedly different to your own.
Page 205.
When you reach the end of the road and look back along the route you’ve travelled, you get one hell of a view.
Page 217.
The story of why any of us thinks the way we do is made up of the drip, drip exposure of our mins to unconscious habits of thought.
Page 233.
Popular culture is so ubiquitous and homogenous that it’s a joke.
Page 238.
Broadcast everywhere, our culture could end up representing nowhere.
Page 241.
Cross-fertilization between cultures, albeit largely though the dominant strain in the world at the moment, need not produce uniform results. In fact, to assume that it would is rather to underestimate the creativity of writers. To presuppose that the process of globalization leads to an inexorable drift towards standardised, faceless, quasi-American verbiage is to think of those producing stories in other cultures as fragile, weal-willed and easily swayed. It is to imagine them as lesser artists, cowering in the presence of the cultural wonders of the world superpower, rather than as imaginative, subversive, independent agents with command of their own talent and the freedom to appropriate, subvert, reject, ignore or respond to material as they choose. It is to keep peddling the imperial narrative in a world where the story is changing.
Page 242.
The nature of translation requires us to put a lot of trust in a stranger.
Page 245.
Depending on a third person to bring us something from a place we are unable to venture to on our own is an act of faith.
Page 245.
We are vulnerable when we read translations. We leave ourselves open to deception and betrayal.
Page 248.
There is a gap between the act itself and the words used to describe it. Translation is as untranslatable a concept as they come.
Page 257.
The status, location and financial situation of the person behind a cultural or artistic project are no longer quite as central to success as they once were; so long as you pitch your venture correctly, execute it well and put in the time to get it noticed, you stand a good chance of developing a following. On the internet, ideas hae more scope to speak for themselves.
Page 271.
From many readers; perspectives, the most valuable thing that the internet provides is not fre access to texts - about which many of us have mixed feelings where authors’ interests are concerned - but the opportunity to share information and opinion about what we read.
Page 274.
Shielded by the anonymity of the screen, freed from the responsibility of answering for our comments face to face (much in the same way as when we engage with fictional people in stories), we often seem able to be more forthcoming and to receive ideas more openly than we night do in real life.
Page 275.
Netizens are at liberty to poo what they know without fear of having their right to express such opinions attacked.
Such people can make valuable additions to the international bank of knowledge and opinion stored in cyberspace precisely because they are free to be wrong.
Page 275.
Projects such as Google Books are not generous, philanthropic gestures to open up knowledge to all mankind so much as money-spinning ventures.
Page 279.
Though Google may claim to be digitising all the published texts in existence - and may believe it is doing so - no one has a way of double-checking. Without an independent, approved catalogue of everything published ever, we cannot verify that all books will be fairly represented in a commercially controlled global library. By building a monopoly of what there is to know, Google is becoming a law unto itself, landscaping cyberspace as it sees fit while legislators fumble and flail in its wake.
Page 280.
With clicks equating to revenue for many of the big players on the internet, Carr argues, the companies with the power to shape the architecture of the Web actively promote distraction over the kind of concentration that deep, rewarding reading requires, with the result that, in the words of blogger and science-fiction writer Cory Doctorow, whenever we log on we inhabit an ‘ecosystem of interruption technologies.’
Page 282.
Despite its noble beginnings, the World Wide Web is unquestionably host to a huge amount of vacuous, spurious and irrelevant material and is a great drain on time and attention.
Page 283.
Human beings have always sought means to exchange messages - both silly and serious - in the way we do today.
Page 283.
We are bombarded with an unprecedented number of words.
Page 285.
Increasingly, what we see reflected back at us when we look for something online is not the world but a reading of our world - a mathematically calculated reflection of the insides of our own heads.
Page 288.
Privacy and surveillance issues aside, streamlined search means that we are less and less likely to unearth things by chance.
Page 288.
The joy of stumbling upon something when we were in the process of looking for something else entirely and thereby making a connection we might never have otherwise managed is being expunged, click by click.
Page 288.
Some of the mind-expanding aspects of library research were present in the early days of the internet. Before search algorithms became so precise, there was a lot more scope to happen upon something by surprise.
Page 288.
Legislators originally caught off guard by the rapidity of the Web’s development are beginning to catch up, mooting laws that, while often appearing to protect the vulnerable, may frequently have the effect of limiting access to information and silencing dissent online.
Page 289.
Slowly buy surely, the global network that enabled unprecedented free communication between individuals around the world in the first years of this century - making it possible for people to collaborate across cultural, geographical and economic barriers and to read as never before - is separating out into national, financial, political and social compartments, with those who are able to pay most likely to be able to ensure that their voices are heard.
Page 289.
As we press ahead with defining the rules that will control who can reach what online, we are constructing the reality we will inhabit. These issues will affect our access not just to information, but to each other.
Page 291.