In six pages I can’t even say “hello.”
James Michener (1907—1997)
First, some observations with which you may or may not identify:
Once I possessed the ability to hunker down in a chair for long periods of time reading a book or watching a movie. Now I find myself up on my feet about every fifteen minutes. Just this morning, reading Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization, I was able to stay in the book for 40 minutes without moving only because I timed myself.
James Michener (1907—1997)
First, some observations with which you may or may not identify:
Once I possessed the ability to hunker down in a chair for long periods of time reading a book or watching a movie. Now I find myself up on my feet about every fifteen minutes. Just this morning, reading Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization, I was able to stay in the book for 40 minutes without moving only because I timed myself.
Once I could read a column of 2500 words, online or from a magazine, without stopping. Today I begin reading an online article only to find, if it runs more than a few paragraphs, that I am soon skimming sentences like a gull crossing a beach.
Once I was able to write for an hour without leaving my chair. These days, I last no more than thirty minutes before I am distracted, or more frequently, distract myself, taking a break, for instance, to look up some bit of irrelevant nonsense on the internet.
Some might attribute this inability to keep a chair or concentrate on a book to my age. I, however, suspect the guilty party is far more likely the instrument on which I am typing these words.
Many observers have commented on our slavish obsession with electronic gadgets—our phones, computers, games, televisions—and the fact that these machines eat up not only our time but our minds as well. Though I love my computer—“You can have my Mac when you pry it loose from my cold, dead fingers”—let me add that it is not a toy for me. I have never used it for games of any kind, and though I watch occasional entertainments on Netflix and daily glance at Facebook, my laptop is essentially a tool for research and writing.
Nevertheless, this wonder of technology—I write those words without irony—surely bears the greatest blame for my affliction, which I dub persona nervosa, that condition in which a diminished attention span couples with distraction to damage prolonged concentration.
Persona nervosa has many symptoms: jumping from one website to another; picking up a book on my desk, reading half a page, and then going online to see if another book, totally unrelated, is available on Amazon; stopping halfway through a paragraph I have written to check on the weather; writing the very words you are reading while at the same time wondering whether I should add some sweet creamer to my next coffee. I mean, my mouth has that awful grunge left by too much java, and the creamer is indeed sweet, and the change might be tasty, but the creamer also has 30 calories per every tablespoon, and I tend to just dump it in the mug without measurement, and why did I buy that creamer in the first place, since most of the time I don’t even like it?
There. That is a small sample of the thought processes of a person suffering persona nervosa while trying at the same time to compose sentences and paragraphs.
In Where Were We?, a collection of his correspondence with English writer Frederic Raphael, American essayist Joseph Epstein notes that in the last two decades the attention span of his readers has shriveled like a pinpricked balloon. Online editors who once sought out columns of 2,500 words now want 850 words, with some any seeking 500 or less.
I see this demand for brevity in my own blog posts. Shorter posts gather more readers; longer posts, no matter how much time and energy I put into them, are frequently ignored.
My sympathies for both sides—those like Epstein who rue the disappearing art of concentration and those who have happily surrendered to electronic addictions—are irrelevant, even to me. You see, I can’t embark on a crusade calling for readers to turn off their computers and open a book because I have no intention of doing so myself. Besides, the epidemic of persona nervosa is so widespread, the virus so insidious, the infection so established, that a vaccine is unimaginable. An example: when I first wrote these words, I was sitting in a public library. In the adult section of this library were 21 patrons, one of whom, an elderly woman, was browsing the bookshelves. The rest of us were staring at various electronic devices.
Our gadgets are changing the way we think and diminishing our powers of concentration. And where will this lead? What will happen if in another twenty-five years persona nervosa has left us unable to read more than 200 words at a sitting? In the nineteenth century, politicians delivered two and three hour speeches (Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is as remarkable for its brevity as for its thought and style). Today our president and millions of others communicate by Tweets. (Can we not devise a less ridiculous word than Tweet?)
Where we will be mentally in another twenty-five years?
In Where Were We? Epstein comments to his friend that “My point here is to wonder if you and I, who are pleased to read and write books…aren’t the literary equivalents of blacksmiths during the early decades of the twentieth century, when the automobile was coming into vogue in a big-time way, banging away on our anvils.”
Yep.
Once I was able to write for an hour without leaving my chair. These days, I last no more than thirty minutes before I am distracted, or more frequently, distract myself, taking a break, for instance, to look up some bit of irrelevant nonsense on the internet.
Some might attribute this inability to keep a chair or concentrate on a book to my age. I, however, suspect the guilty party is far more likely the instrument on which I am typing these words.
Many observers have commented on our slavish obsession with electronic gadgets—our phones, computers, games, televisions—and the fact that these machines eat up not only our time but our minds as well. Though I love my computer—“You can have my Mac when you pry it loose from my cold, dead fingers”—let me add that it is not a toy for me. I have never used it for games of any kind, and though I watch occasional entertainments on Netflix and daily glance at Facebook, my laptop is essentially a tool for research and writing.
Nevertheless, this wonder of technology—I write those words without irony—surely bears the greatest blame for my affliction, which I dub persona nervosa, that condition in which a diminished attention span couples with distraction to damage prolonged concentration.
Persona nervosa has many symptoms: jumping from one website to another; picking up a book on my desk, reading half a page, and then going online to see if another book, totally unrelated, is available on Amazon; stopping halfway through a paragraph I have written to check on the weather; writing the very words you are reading while at the same time wondering whether I should add some sweet creamer to my next coffee. I mean, my mouth has that awful grunge left by too much java, and the creamer is indeed sweet, and the change might be tasty, but the creamer also has 30 calories per every tablespoon, and I tend to just dump it in the mug without measurement, and why did I buy that creamer in the first place, since most of the time I don’t even like it?
There. That is a small sample of the thought processes of a person suffering persona nervosa while trying at the same time to compose sentences and paragraphs.
In Where Were We?, a collection of his correspondence with English writer Frederic Raphael, American essayist Joseph Epstein notes that in the last two decades the attention span of his readers has shriveled like a pinpricked balloon. Online editors who once sought out columns of 2,500 words now want 850 words, with some any seeking 500 or less.
I see this demand for brevity in my own blog posts. Shorter posts gather more readers; longer posts, no matter how much time and energy I put into them, are frequently ignored.
My sympathies for both sides—those like Epstein who rue the disappearing art of concentration and those who have happily surrendered to electronic addictions—are irrelevant, even to me. You see, I can’t embark on a crusade calling for readers to turn off their computers and open a book because I have no intention of doing so myself. Besides, the epidemic of persona nervosa is so widespread, the virus so insidious, the infection so established, that a vaccine is unimaginable. An example: when I first wrote these words, I was sitting in a public library. In the adult section of this library were 21 patrons, one of whom, an elderly woman, was browsing the bookshelves. The rest of us were staring at various electronic devices.
Our gadgets are changing the way we think and diminishing our powers of concentration. And where will this lead? What will happen if in another twenty-five years persona nervosa has left us unable to read more than 200 words at a sitting? In the nineteenth century, politicians delivered two and three hour speeches (Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is as remarkable for its brevity as for its thought and style). Today our president and millions of others communicate by Tweets. (Can we not devise a less ridiculous word than Tweet?)
Where we will be mentally in another twenty-five years?
In Where Were We? Epstein comments to his friend that “My point here is to wonder if you and I, who are pleased to read and write books…aren’t the literary equivalents of blacksmiths during the early decades of the twentieth century, when the automobile was coming into vogue in a big-time way, banging away on our anvils.”
Yep.