Something Eloquent

So appar­ently there exists people who are proud of the fact that they don’t read. I have dif­fi­culty under­stand­ing some­thing like this because so much of human cul­ture is tied up in our literature.

There are people who hear the words “Big Brother” and think of a crappy tele­vi­sion show rather than George Orwell’s 1984 ^AMZN. Reading exer­cises our ima­gin­a­tions, a well writ­ten story can steal entire days from our lives and be even more emo­tion­ally stir­ring than mere tele­vi­sion. Particularly the type of tele­vi­sion pro­grammes that I’ve been see­ing lately. Sure, CSI can have engross­ing stor­ies and mov­ing char­ac­ters, but there isn’t nearly as much room for ima­gin­a­tion in a medium like T.V.

A good book can trig­ger my ima­gin­a­tion so strongly that I find myself feel­ing that I know the char­ac­ters. I can identify so strongly with each prot­ag­on­ist that I find myself ima­gin­ing com­pletely tan­gent story lines within the realm of the tale. I’ve never felt that con­nec­tion with tele­vi­sion. Possibly because the screen acts as a bar­rier; there’s that fourth wall sep­ar­at­ing me from the story. I can accept the show for what it is, but I can’t get as emo­tion­ally inves­ted in the production.