Twitter has captured news headlines as it quickly gains more and more tweeters. It is a fun way to stay in touch and let followers know “what are you doing.” In my last job it was mandatory to belong to Twitter. It was used as a customer service tool gave customers an inside looks at the company culture. However, I was disappointed to read about the development of “Twitterature.” I double majored in college in Mass Communications and English Literature. Reading captivates and intrigues me. 2 freshman college students are writing a book to be published by Penguin classics in which they summarize certain classics in 20 tweets or less (with tweets having under 140 characters). Here is a quote from the article,
“After all, as great as the classics are, who has time to read those big, long books anymore? Yet they are undeniably still important—and our professors concur. Twitter is the hip, the young, the everything. It is the perfect remedy and counterbalance to the esoteric texts, which are still so vital to us—and to our GPA. We figured our time was at hand…”
I understand the concept of Twitter and I have a hard time aligning that with the depth of classical literature. Maybe it will work for the multi-tasking college students but it seems like the authors are merely capitalizing on the trend of the present. This shows an old method of communication- books- adjusting to a new method of communication- Twitter. However, I think the amount that you lose through that translation renders the secondary product insufficient. I am going to stay with my traditional books where I can sit in a chair and read all the words written decades ago. Here is the article for reference- http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/24/twitterature-to-hit-the-bookstores/ also the website of the guys who are writing the book- http://www.twitterature.us/
“Twitterature” almost sounds like a texted version of Cliff’s Notes, but even more condensed. I agree with you that there is something lost when you don’t allow yourself to get so involved in an actual book that you lose the ability to become attached to the story and its characters and lack the investment to really follow the development of plot or characters. But it seems like this trend is just a symptom of the root development in our culture in recent decades as it relates to technology – instant gratification. And it’s finally gotten a hold of literature. To me, it seems a little sad and I hope that college students (and people in general) will somehow be able to maintain some sort of desire to actually read books apart from Twitter. If not, it just seems incomplete.