harpyphoto:

“Sometimes technology outpaces humanity’s ability to process it. You know, I think that’s where we are right now. There’s so many packets of information coming at me, especially in a city like New York, which is so dense with information no matter where you go. I mean, even our cabs have television screens and info centers built into the backseat. How is literature supposed to survive when our brain has been pummeled with information all day long at work, if we’re white-collar workers? We go home. Are we really going to open a thick text with 350 pages and try to waddle through it, or are we just going to turn on “Mad Men,” which is a wonderful show, for example.

GROSS: It’s a great show.

Mr. SHTEYNGART: It’s a great show, but, see, what “Mad Men” does, which is so wonderful about it, is it takes a lot of the things that make novels great. It takes so much of that novelistic precision and, also, it takes time to explain its characters, to develop its characters and also to try to get into the mind of its characters, as far as film will allow. So it satisfies all our narrative impulses. That’s what we want. But we don’t have to open a book to get it. We just watch it on the screen. “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Mad Men,” all these shows very cleverly are indebted to novels, and all the creators of these shows frequently talk about how they’re indebted to novels. I just don’t want novels to die because that’s what I do.”

—

Gary Shteyngart on Fresh Air