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Ye Olde E-Books Or, Beowulf's iPod
October 9, 2007
A few days ago I received Beowulf: The Script Book from Harper Entertainment: "With insights from the authors, their early concept art, and the first and last drafts of the script for the film, As Told By Neil Gaiman & Roger Avary, Now a Major Motion Picture from Paramount Pictures and Shangri-La Entertainment."
Yes, if you never believed the words "Neil Gaiman" and "Angeline Jolie" would be linked -- now they are. Truly, thanes, the nerds have triumphed.
Beowulf, of course, is an Anglo-Saxon poem that was first written down in Old English sometime in the 11th century. However, the poem itself and the story behind it are both much older. As Avary writes in his Foreword (that the entire script book is designed to resemble an eighteenth-century broadside makes little rational sense, but for true nerds, this has never mattered -- how else to explain Renaissance fairs?), "Beowulf was spoken and told around a a fire for generations before it was put to parchment by Christian monks, and even now it demands an oral delivery. When spoken, the texture of the writing comes alive, and with breath the arcane nature of the language somehow finds life."
What does it mean that the first great work of our literary tradition was not even a manuscript, let alone a book, for centuries?
I think it means all of us in publishing have to remember that it's the stories, and not their delivery, that matter. Humans need stories, and as long as books are the best way of delivering them, we'll read. We need stories more -- yes! -- than we need sustained argument, critical analysis, or (of course) any blog.
Yes, the anonymous author, and even the warrior Beowulf himself, might have listened to stories on an iPod if they'd had one. I say "might" because listening to an iPod is not exactly a communal activity; my point is less that Beowulf would really have sported white headphones than that he would want a story in any form.
When I discussed this idea yesterday with my friend John Hogan, he said "You're telling me that you're turning a discussion of the new Beowulf movie into a screed for e-books?" Yes, I guess that's what I did. But John, I hope you'll see that I'm not anti-book; I'm just pro-story!
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on October 9, 2007 | Comments (7)
