The Permanent Now

I hope people are still reading books. But sometimes you never know.

The NYTimes bestseller list is the most famous list in publishing. It means people are reading those books, right? I don’t know. This NYTimes bestseller posted about no one coming to see her give a talk at a local bookstore.

This list is supposed to be crown jewel of the publishing world. What’s happening? The New York Times has never officially disclosed its criterion for how it chooses the books that go on its “best seller list”. One Author was suspicious and tried investigating and it was confirmed that sales are just one component of how the NYTimes ranks each book.

There’s a little social engineering happening. That isn’t a huge surprise. Even Twitter keeps a list of VIPs it pushes onto the “For You” page even if you do not follow them. It’s happening everywhere. There isn’t one media monoculture anymore. There are now competing interests.

The Joy of Reading

It’s easier than ever to not read books these days. Social media platforms are very engaging and addictive and the news sites certainly make you feel like you’re informed about what is happening, even though it is mostly noise.

Meanwhile everyone is working for a living. When you work a job and have a regular life that involves socializing, meals, family and exercise it’s tough to find time to read. Reading becomes an activity you can only do at night before bed or on the weekend. But reading has outsized benefits if you find really good material.

1) text, and reading in general (when good), has the ability to change the way you see the world much more than any Tiktok or Youtube video. There is something to the medium of text that hits us differently

2) It lowers the buzzing stimulation affect in your head that is a result of constantly being on a screen.

I like to keep a few books by bed side all the time. The key to not get tired of reading is not to get bored with the act of reading, but with each individual book. So keep a few to rotate.

The New Trend

It is unfortunate that the hottest new trend in publishing is publicly announcing the rewriting of classic books.

During the last few months, multiple publishing companies have put out press releases announcing they will be making hundreds of changes to popular classics to ensure that readers today will not be offended by the material. The authors are famous: Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming(James Bond), Agatha Christie (Poirot) and R.L. Stine (Goosebumps)

All of the changes follow the same logic, removal of anything that can be deemed offensive in today’s world. The changes in Roald Dahl’s books:

The news of these changes went viral on social media. Even British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak waded into the Dahl controversy, speaking out against the move to update the books. Others defended the changes.

My first thought was “this is an excellent marketing campaign. and will make a lot of money” And my second thought was “Oh no, this is an excellent marketing campaign. and will make a lot of money.” Openly censoring books is a great way to generate publicity. It hits right at the heart of the culture wars going on right now. When was the last time you heard of Roald Dahl in the news? It’s probably been a while. Publishers are in the business of selling books and controversy is cash.

There’s pressure as well this year. Book sales boomed though out the COVID years as lockdowns forced people to entertain themselves at home. There has been a consistent decline as lockdowns have eased. The mega franchise Harry Potter saw a 40% decrease in sales during 2022. Even though the 40% decrease is more of a return to a pre-pandemic baseline in terms of book sales.

It’s a lousy situation. With this marketing campaign, commercial book publishing has now opened the door to commit extensive edits of the original classic books.

Negotiating Polite Society

The new ChatGPT 4 is in the middle of trying to define polite society and what should be ok in a chat bot. That isn’t easy. Blasphemy was still a big scandal in America 20-30 years ago. Today it is less so. Although, a sizeable percentage of people may still have a problem with it.

The Problem With Censorship

There are three fundamental issues with removing potentially insensitive texts from classic works:

1) The Permanent Now. We live in a certain time and place. This time and place has not always existed. Other times have existed and people spoke different ways. You are buried in the permanent now forever. The only way to get out of this head space is to read material from other eras.

2) Taleb’s Retrospective Bigoteering. You cannot flow today’s rules of morality backward in time & judge people THEN based on rules developed later. Morality comes from customs. No law should be retroactive.

3) Selling Out. When I was growing up, censorship was fought at the Artist level because their fans wouldn’t accept them selling their songs to corporations. That has changed recently. One of the reasons publishers can change text is that authors sell the rights to their books. The authors themselves have no say in the decision. The author R.L. Stine even complained about the edits and said he could not stop them.

Here is Paul McCartney explaining how the Beatles fans wouldn’t allow them to license the song for commercial ventures. The Beatles would have lost credibility and their fans would turn on them. That sentiment doesn’t exist anymore.

The Permanent Now

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.