“Our job is memory” - Lily Hyde

The title is from this fascinating article from the NewYorker, which gave me much food for (rambling) thoughts about words and reality, libraries and the Internet, memories and memorials.

In it, the writer attacks the myth that what’s online stays online forever. Instead, she says, the Internet is intrinsically ephemeral. Unlike books, the Internet cannot be catalogued because it lacks the dimension of time; online, it’s always today. Academic and legal footnotes and references to books and documents (those painstaking page numbers, edition, publish date) have been replaced by web links. But what happens when those links no longer exist? The evidence disappears, the original source vanishes; anything could be true. 

Anyone who says we no longer need libraries because ‘it’s all online’ should read this article. It isn’t all online. Some of it might have been, yesterday, but that’s no guarantee that it will be today. Or it might look like what was there yesterday is still there today, but in fact it could have been completely rewritten since yesterday, and you’d never know.    

Funnily enough, I spent most of yesterday hunting for an online article about some Russian legislation, adopted in October last year, that retroactively legalises pro-Russian authorities in Crimea from February 2014 when Crimea, according to Russian law, was legally part of Ukraine. From a legal point of view, Russia rewrote history with that bit of legislation. 

The article, as far as I can see, is no longer on the Internet. It disappeared, and history is rewritten. 

I know, history is always rewritten, that’s what history is; a constant interrogation of the evidence from yesterday, viewed through the inescapable prism of today. But what if the evidence from yesterday no longer exists? What if it’s been written over, or just disappeared?

Two years ago I visited the museum of political history in St Petersburg. It used to be called the museum of the revolution (there you go, history rewritten). It’s full of fascinating exhibits, but the one that struck me most was a catalogue of exhibits that weren’t there.

It was a fat, handwritten ledger, open on a page listing all the documents and artefacts relating to Trotsky which had been removed in the late 1920s, when Trotsky was ‘rewritten’ as an enemy of the people. The museum staff had got rid of the historical evidence, yet they had kept a carefully catalogued record of the evidence that no longer existed. I really wonder why they did that. Despite orders to rewrite the past did they too believe, like the Internet librarians, that ‘our job is memory’?

Is that really what a library is – a repository of memory? As someone who uses libraries all the time as a reader and as a writer (just got my PLR statement, hurrah!) I started to wonder, do we write books, fact and fiction, because at least part of our job is memory? 

Libraries are repositories of facts and interpretations of facts to make versions of history, but they are also a storehouse for imaginary worlds and other people’s memories. We write things down so as not to forget them. We record them and we transform them through language, through fancy, through characters, into (in the best books) something unforgettable. 

Do we write (do we read) to remember, or to be remembered?

This is my last post for ABBA, for the moment anyway. Its been a privilege to contribute alongside such wonderful fellow writers, and a huge thank you to the administrators who keep it running. If you’re interested, you can follow my blog, updated mostly about Ukraine and Crimea affairs these days. Thanks for reading!   

www.lilyhyde.com

https://rambutanchik.wordpress.com             

Using Technology in YA Literature - Clementine Beauvais

I don't 'do' Snapchat, unlike my little sister (19 years old), but I love dreaming about the narrative possibilities it offers. A murder mystery, where the serial killer sends short Snapchat videos with clues every time s/he strikes...

yeah, the logo looks more like a Casper story

Anyway, I'll never write that story, but I do love literature that talks about new technology. In many ways, it's difficult to think of a contemporary social realistic story, especially for teenagers, which wouldn't include smartphones and apps - Facebook, Tumblr, 2048, Google Maps - as a solution to many of the traditional adventure plotlines (nope, sorry, you can't be actually lost; nope, sorry, you can't actually be bored waiting for your train; nope, sorry, you couldn't not have known that she was in a relationship (and it's complicated)).

But I like it even more when stories integrate technology in a non-gimmicky way - as an essential part of the plot, as the plot. Many such stories are realistic: it's impossible to keep track of stories that revolve around mystery blog-writers, from rom-coms to dramas. Others are supernatural, but even a fantastical story like iBoy by Kevin Brooks is based on very real features of contemporary smartphones.

New technology offers possibilities both for entirely new plots and for interesting spins on older plots. There's been a spate of YA novels recently that revolve around revenge porn - one of them, in France, is mine. Of course revenge porn existed before smartphones, but the order of magnitude is different now, and so are, therefore, narrative possibilities - especially regarding character development, and some central themes of YA literature, such as gossip or bullying.

In my latest YA novel, Comme des images, there are snippets of Facebook conversations, YouTube comments, texts, emails - breaking up the narrative from time to time. Those are other voices, seemingly external to the plot, but actually crucial to it - because the existence of those hundreds of other voices is the very reason why the central event is so important: it isn't just there, it's also commented on, in the whole world. 

Of course, you need to get those voices right, because it can just fail to ring true. Being friends on Facebook with teenagers of that age - in my case, my sister and all her friends - can help. I'm not sure I'd dare do it in English, where I'm not as familiar with the language used by teenagers. So does being very active on these platforms, or at least having an excellent understanding of them. I cringe when I read books in which it is clear that the author (either by themselves or pushed by an editor) has attempted to include some (generally gimmicky) references to apps, software, video games or device without knowing anything about it ("'I sent you a Twitter yesterday!' she chuckled.").

Hybrid texts where 'normal' narrative is sporadically broken by other types of discourse - from mock-tweets to mock-Wikipedia articles - can be highly sophisticated. There is immense value in harnessing the narrative possibilities that technological innovations offer us, not to be trendy; in part so that we continue to map, as faithfully as possible, the changes that are occurring in teenagers' lives, and make guesses as to how they might influence their personalities, their reactions, their tastes, their values. But it has literary and artistic value, too. Such uses are not - or shouldn't be - just a way of spicing up a dull, ordinary story: they can be the opportunity for intensely original, groundbreaking advances in storytelling, for YA literature and beyond.

The only imperative is to avoid at all costs 'giving a message', 'warning' teenagers 'against' the 'dangers' of 'technology'. But frustratingly, in order to make them palatable to mediators, this pedagogical 'guarantee' is frequently used to qualify works which should instead be praised for being uncomfortable or unsettling, both ideologically and linguistically. Let's keep the unease, at all costs. Personally, in my double life - virtual, real, barely separated - saturated with a myriad different voices and worldviews, I have no patience for consensus and all the time in the world for controversy.

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Clementine Beauvais writes books in both French and English. The former are of all kinds and shapes, and the latter a humour/adventure detective series, the Sesame Seade mysteries. She blogs here about children's literature and academia and is on Twitter @blueclementine.

Do Teens Read? Savita Kalhan

In April 2013, Nielsen conducted a survey in the US of the reading habits of teens aged between 12 and 17. Nielsen conducted another similar survey in September 2013 of teens in the UK, which also looked at their involvement in other activities. The results of both surveys are very interesting if somewhat worrying. Both studies came to the conclusion that teens are reading less compared to previous years, but also that they are doing far less of all the other activities they used to do too. What’s taken their place? Social networking sites, texting, You Tube and gaming apps – all of which they have easy access to as more and more teenagers own a mobile phone, a tablet or a laptop.

The answer to the question - How often do you read for fun? – was an eye-opener.

The percentage of US teens who read occasionally was 32 %. The percentage who read very often was 29%, with 39% who either do not read or seldom read. In the UK the figure for teens who read occasionally readers fell from 45% to 38% over the last year. Those who read often fell from 23% to 17%. Teens who seldom or never read comprised 27%, a rise of 13% relative to the previous year.

It’s a worrying development, particularly as it’s not just reading that is suffering. Teenagers have dropped or downscaled their involvement in many other activities, including hobbies, art, sports, and outdoor pursuits. What’s taken their place? Well, according to the study, teenagers are spending more time on social media, texting, You Tube and playing on game apps.

In the US  68% of teens read print books, but only 10% read ebooks. By April 2013, Print book readers had gone down to 45%, while the percentage reading ebooks had risen to 25%.

In the UK in 2012, 21% of teens said they read books digitally, which went up this year to 33%.

The US study clearly demonstrates that many teens still borrow their books from the library. They also still take guidance from parents and teachers and librarians, as 56% will read a book suggested by a parent, and 52% from a librarian or teacher. I don’t have the relevant figures for UK teens, but it would have been interesting to compare them.

It might also be interesting to see a graph comparing the reading habits of teens in the UK and the US. On the other hand, do the figures really need to be compared? It’s quite clear that reading amongst teens is declining.

Is the recent decline in reading a development or a trend? I’m not sure. I haven’t seen the figures from say five or even ten years ago. It’s very concerning if it constitutes a long term trend, particularly if the time that teenagers spend on the internet is at the expense of all other activities.

But what the UK study did show was that teenagers’ interest in books had not significantly declined. The time they might have spent reading a book was gradually being replaced by ‘activities’ that were internet based. How would we have coped with that much free entertainment at our finger tips, I wonder?

In the UK there are lots of initiatives to encourage teens to read more, and some of them are very encouraging. At the Kid Lit Quiz, which I attended last week, there was a hall full of engaged enthusiastic pre-teens, mainly aged between 11 and 12, who clearly read an enormous amount. It was inspiring to see. I think we might need a lot more of these initiatives over the years to come. And failing that, might US-style “interventions” be in order...?


www.savitakalhan.com

Happy World Hello Day!

Did you know that the 21st of November is World Hello Day and has been for the past 41 years? It began in response to the conflict between Israel and Egypt in 1973 and is now observed by people in over 180 countries.

Anyone can participate in it by greeting ten people. This week I feel like I've greeted about 10,000 people. It started with a talk for 1500 children at Folkestone Literary Festival (divided into 2 sessions) not to mention the grown-ups! Then a visit to Brackenbury School to celebrate their new library with talks to 2 Year 6 groups. To be followed by an exciting afternoon today watching 25 teams compete in the Central England's Kids Lit Quiz heat at Kimbolton school.


Not only is the 21st November World Hello Day it's also the anniversary of the precursor to the Internet, the ARPANET's, first permanent link between UCLA and Stanford Research Institute in 1969. I don't know about you but the Internet's revolutionised my writing career and given me masses more opportunities than before.

The Internet's of course invaluable for getting 'the word' out fast - as was needed to collect money for the Philippines and other emergencies - both in big and small ways. It shows over and over, with a few not so nice exceptions, how people want to and try to help other people and animals. As soon as I heard of the Authors for Philippines auction I, like many others signed up and have been bidding and doing my best to help promote it ever since, even accepting an extra side bid from a cheeky Granny to give a talk at her Granddaughter's school. Luckily this week I've been out and about because usually my main companions are 2 dogs. The Internet made donating, giving and spreading the information easier and so much faster than pre-Internet days.

The Authors for Philippines auction officially ended at 8pm last night and raised over 55 thousand pounds. An amazing amount!!! Keren, Keris, Candy, Diane and Suzie, who set up the auction, are still hard at work organising the donation giving. On the British Red Cross website it states that £2 can buy a blanket to keep someone warm and £10 can buy a tarpaulin to make a temporary home.

Hope you have a great day and get to say hello in person or online to 10 people - old friends or new.

Megan's website is www.meganrix.com and Ruth's website is www.ruthsymes.com.