"Literacy was not only a demarcator between the powerful and the powerless; it was power itself."

An article in Harper's this month clarified and strengthened my dedication to the written word. Author Ursula K. Le Guin delineates the "alleged decline of reading," positing that literacy has historically been limited to the privileged and that only recently, during what she terms "the century of the book," or 1850 to 1950, did it become common currency in all strata of society. She likens the corporatization of the book industry to the homogenization of food (as all our packaged goods become corn-based, so many plots are recycled and made of essentially the same stuff) and rails against the executives who don't realize that in the long run, "a few steady earners" like J.R.R. Tolkien, amass considerably more than "a hot author who's supposed to provide this week's bestseller" like J.K. Rowling.

She distingushes the art of reading from other, less demanding forms of entertainment, readily admitting that few outside of school have the time to sit down and read. "A book won't move your eyes for you the images on a screen do. . . . No wonder not everybody is up to it. . . . It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book."

My favorite line in this essay: "You can look at pictures . . . or read a book on your computer, but these artifacts are made accessible by the Web, not created by it. . . . Perhaps blogging is an effort to bring creativity to networking, and perhaps blogs will develop aesthetic form, but they certainly haven't done it yet."

Oh, but we're so close.