...is really one of the well-known tragedies."  But the biggest one of all here we have is the birth of a criticaster...ha!  

以下為舊作，為我在學時反駁某教授的內容，放著可惜，乾脆就打字貼上來。

Dear Dr. Windsow,

Rosy said, "《The Death of the Readers》is the tragedies of an author and the blossom of instant data junks.”

Let's forget about how admirable Roland Barthes mentioned in his essay pertaining Honoré de Balzac and his ideas to French literature(1).

Part I. Advanced internet technology makes readers lazy.

Nowadays, for most of the Chinese all over the world, to read or not to read, that is a question.

As for the intolerable consequences of inflating publications, we are facing the cold front of the winter for authors.  The more books published, the more bookstores would be closed.  Perhaps publishing one’s writings tends to be in an extremely awkward and miserable situation in this career field.

Authors are comprehensive that reading patterns are changing from time to time.  To write or not to write is now the key, to stick to literature or not now is becoming an embarrassing turning point to most of the authors. 

In addition, publishers gather statistics from the market and studies of reading habits of children, teenagers, and adults.  Sometimes, they take it for granted that selling records tell the story. 

The compendium reveals recent declines in voluntary reading and book-purchasing, and so do the articles posted in the internet.  The advanced cyberspace technology leads readers from real book to fictitious worlds, such as blogs and literature websites.  Once using their mouse to click the search engine, thousands of data could be found within one second.  The suppositional space and uncountable internet information fulfill people’s urgent demand.  Everyone could get free ideas to read while surfing in the internet.

However, are readers exactly reading literary contents in the internet?

Who wants to read the literary supplement or piles of books now?  The fact is, seldom newspapers would offer literary supplement presently, and almost every article imprinted on papers could be found in the internet.  So, why should we buy papers or books?  It is said that readers can read with their computer, not just papers.

People are more and more conservative to buy and read books alike, exposing trends that have severe consequences for struggling authors.  Even buyers like publishers are on the horns of a dilemma.  We could find this existing situation of the bankruptcy of serial bookstores and publishers in Taipei now.  Of course, authors find themselves in a tight corner.

Many authors extricate themselves from that kind of difficult position by following the trend of publication.  Once authors found 《Harry Potter》series become the best-selling fictions, they would start to copy.  Just like the success of Dan Brown, more and more philistine fictions pertaining Bible & the church up to the surface of book market.

We also can find the clues when listening to the TV news.  Journalists broadcast with incorrect words and pronounce Mandarin dully.  Headlines focus on buzzard titles and erotic descriptions.  Most readers also dislike more words than few pictures.  Readers are lazier than before, and they intend to believe what they could find in the internet instead of searching the truth in the encyclopedia or from the dictionaries.  More and more readers nowadays trust the data they get from the search engine, not rigorous scholarship or textual researches from libraries and books.

Books have editors, proofreaders and correctors before publishing to the market; however, we merely have 中文维基百科- Wikipedia for an aide, like a cyberspace encyclopedia.  You bet we do have some translating or internet dictionary websites for personal demand.  However, mistakes are everywhere, especially these websites. 

Foot notes:

(1). Written by Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: London, 2001. 1466-70.