An excerpt from a paper I'm writing about the absence of Latinos in the American Literary Canon:

"A book has a small self-selected, educated audience. A TV program is now a common cultural experience. People are engrossed in it. It transforms the would be reader into the aliterati, the willfull illiterates. It’s not that they can’t read, it’s that they don’t. The aliterati almost have no control over what they watch. Turn on the TV, plunk down, let the guys who pick the programming feed the brain. The market for books is dying."

I'm so goddamn proud of myself. Aliterati. I really like that phrase. And it's so true these days. Books have an active following. You have to seek out a book, pick it up and crack that sucker open. A TV just sits there, and then you do. And there ensues a one-sided conversation.

But people don't go home from work and read. You know it used to be a family activity to sit around while someone read a book aloud? I like this idea, I like the interaction it automatically provokes. I like the involvement it requires of both the reader and the audience. Hearing some sentences read alound is a truly wonderful thing.

To be fair, it's an entirely different medium from television. TV isn't without it's merits, but I think it is easier for it to be mindless. Something about it cottons to the base, the bottom, the lowest ranks of culture.

Aliterati refers to people who don't read print. Everyone reads their email and so on. I guess certain online resources fall into this category. Online encyclopedias, newspapers etc. If you read one of these it helps keep you out of the aliterati. People who don't seek out reading.

That's all I have to say about this. I wonder what's on...