WHY IS THIS MAN BURNING THIS BOOK?
Because people don’t read books anymore?
Some say that due to the internet and the expansion of television and film choices, people don’t read books anymore. The novel is dead, they say. I disagree! (See article at the bottom of this page for some surprising evidence)
What do you think? Is the novel dead?
Do you read novels?
The Nazis were notorious book burners and they surely would have burnt this one!
THE TRUTH BETWEEN THE LIES tells the story of Sarah Kagan, a fifteen-year-old Polish girl, who outwits two Nazi soldiers and escapes to America. Sarah’s had a hard life so far, and she hopes that life in America will be more than just an escape but will also bring prosperity and happiness. But life in the Golden Land isn’t very golden as Sarah discovers some hard truths about her new life.
All her life, Sarah has been treated as worthless. Growing up in Lowicz, Poland, she was abandoned by her mother as an infant, left by her beloved father when she was five, and shunned by her brother Zev when he became a religious zealot. When Sarah is fifteen, the Nazis invade Poland and Sarah is arrested for the “crime” of being a half-Jew. But Sarah contrives a daring escape from her Nazi captors and using false papers, she boards a steamer to New York.
Thrust into poverty, Sarah works grueling hours in a sweatshop for an abusive boss and lives in municipal housing. When Jacob, a witty and successful American, offers marriage, Sarah accepts, though she is unsure whether she loves Jacob or whether she just loves the security he offers. For a while, Sarah is content with her new American life, although New York’s jazz scene and Jacob’s iconoclastic friends are a lot to adjust to. All too soon, Jacob reveals some devastating secrets and Sarah feels the old sting of betrayal and abandonment as her new life crumbles around her.
IS THE NOVEL DEAD?
Some say that the great American novel has seen its heyday. But has it? According to Pew Research Center surveys, in 2018, 74 percent of adults stated they had read at least one book in the past year, and that figure has remained essentially unchanged since 2012. Not only has the number of book readers remained steady for the past several years, but the rate of reading ebooks has increased 8 percent since 2011. People who read books (and ebooks) tend to be college-educated and have higher income levels—and college education is on the rise. Since 2000, the number of adults over age 25 who have completed a master’s degree has doubled.
However, when looking at the number of literature readers—literature being defined as poetry, plays, short stories or novels—the numbers have dropped 6 percent since 2002, according to a survey by the NEA. And as much as people tend to blame the internet-addicted young, the numbers don’t back that up. The number of adults aged 18-24 who had read literature in the past year was 42%, only 7% behind the 65-74 year olds, who were at 49%. Again, education level was a factor, but it seems the younger generation is not literature averse.
Predicting the end of the novel seems to be a literary tradition in itself. The novel has been declared “dead” one way or another thirty times since 1902. More than sixty years ago, English novelist J.B. Priestly called the novel a “decaying literary form.” Two decades later, postmodernist American author John Barth argued that the novel may have “by this hour of the world just about shot its bolt.” (A few years later, Barth won the National book Award, so perhaps he was a bit precipitous in his announcement).
None of the novel’s eulogists seem to agree exactly when the novel died or will die. New York Times writer Doreen Carvajal says the novel died in the 1980s. Will Self, author of 11 books and five collections of short stories, claims the novel has been in a state of decay since the beginning of the 20th century. Controversial critic Lee Siegel declared that the American public no longer talks about novels and that this creative form has lost its spark forever.
UK publisher Jamie Byng calls Siegel’s reasoning “preposterous.” “There is important, challenging thought-provoking fiction out there, just as there is non-fiction. I just don't buy any broad-brushstroke statement like ‘fiction is dead,’” says Byng.
IS TELEVISION KILLING THE NOVEL?
Traditional publishers have grown leery of publishing books they think will not be picked up by TV and film producers. Some claim that the instant gratification and shorter attention spans caused by TV and the internet have caused people to lose interest in novels. While it’s true that digital media choices have exploded exponentially in the past several years, the numbers say that novels continue to sell, and not only the bestsellers.
“The art of story is the dominant cultural force in the world.” (Robert McKee in Story) McKee says, “The world now consumes films, novels, theatre, televison in such quantities and with such ravenous hunger that the story arts have become humanity’s prime source of inspriation, as it seeks to order chaos and gain insight into life.” But he also cautions us about Hollywood and “flawed and false storytelling [that] is forced to substitute spectacle for substance, trickery for truth.”
The playwright Jean Anouilh says, “Fiction gives life its form.”
People gravitate to great stories, whatever the medium. Great stories challenge our thinking and can spark personal or social change. A good novel can be cathartic and a source of immense intellectual or emotional satisfaction. Remember the first time you read a book that did that for you, how you kept thinking about the story long after you were done?
So, keep reading, my friends. Keep the novel alive.