Heart of Ink

I agree with Dylan that it's exceedingly stupid to defend the novel by bashing people who enjoyed or helped develop other technologies and modes of entertainment.  In fact, I think defending the novel as somehow necessary is a sort of foolish project.  Novels aren't necessary, but neither are television shows about suburban mobsters, or movies about John Smith dipped in ink, stretched on a rack, and sent to space.    I don't think novels are necessary.  I think they're extremely enjoyable.  I like disappearing into an antisocial fugue state sometimes, particularly the one that leads me to sneak books under desks and to walk down streets with my nose amidst a lot of paper.  As a writer, and as someone who largely thinks in text instead of in pictures, I enjoy seeing what other authors are doing with the same weapons available to me, and seeing the world in a new way, because someone else has identified a new color in a sunset, or juxtaposed a situation with a new adjective, forcing me to work a little harder, to see a little more clearly.  I like writing in margins, folding down pages, and waking up at three in the morning wondering where a particular volume is on my spectacularly disorderly shelves.  Reading's the only thing I do where I can't actively do something else--I can't email, I can't watch television, I can listen to music but lately I've been finding it much harder to listen to music with words when I need to read quickly.  I don't need novels to live, but my life would be poorer without them.