Turning the page

Interview, Sept, 1998 by Brendan Lemon

BL: How do you think the new ways of reading will affect writing and research?

AM: Let me give you an example: I recently researched the classic playwright Aristophanes to find out how many times he used the word for "man" and how many times he used the word for "woman" - now that I've got everything about him on disk, I can do that. And I came up with the statistical result that he used the word for "man" twice as many times as the word for "woman." But that statistical evidence had a limited intellectual evidence, because if you read the plays, what you remember are the women and not the men. The women have more weight, and that is something that no statistical function can recreate. No database can - yet - give you the emotional way in which you remember things.

BL: In other words, information should not replace interaction and reflection but, rather, enhance them.

AM: Yes.

BL: Getting back to Borges, what do you think he would have made of electronic books, books downloaded from the Internet, CD-ROM books?

AM: I think he would be amused by the novelty. He wanted to hear the text, he wanted to be able to converse with whoever was reading the text. He also wanted a human presence to bounce ideas off of and to give him feedback. I suppose it's sort of like playing chess with a computer. Some people are very challenged by that and others -

BL: . . . miss the human dimension of the game, involving everything from the sound of breathing to the table talk.

AM: Exactly.

BL: I've come back to Borges in part because he was blind, and new electronic technologies have opened up a whole new world for the disabled.

AM: Absolutely. All these things are startling for them. New technologies can help the disabled, they can be wonderful for artists, they can replace cumbersome forms of Britannica or whatever. Electronic books can help you when you want to carry just one little thing with you on holiday and yet want to have more than just one story available. For all these reasons, the new forms for reading are terrifically interesting.