Richard Glover published a wonderful article in the ‘Spectrum’ section of the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend entitled ‘A Novel Idea to Beat Imbecility’. With the subheading, ‘How to halt the decline in empathy and the rise of narcissism’, Glover sees reading a good book as a way to counter the negative effects of today’s social media and the growth of instant gratification, selfish individualism, and social isolation.

Glover’s humour plays a significant role in capturing the magic of a good book and its power to enhance life. His ‘brilliant new idea’ to counter the concerns of our contemporary world consists of ‘an artefact of 200 or 300 pages long’ which contains a story ‘so engrossing that people would find themselves consuming the whole thing’. He talks about an engaging opening sentence that would immediately capture the interest of any human being who happened upon the story and cites the following three famous examples: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’; ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen’; and ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’

In acknowledging that books such as A Tale of Two Cities, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Anna Karenina are hardly comparable to a TikTok video with vision and music, and the briefest of them are twelve hundred times longer than the average TikTok text, Glover emphasises their power to have a profound impact on humanity. This profound impact would include an increase in one’s attention span, the building of one’s capacity to understand another’s situation and ‘walk in their shoes’, and the enhancement of one’s imagination and creativity. Since a reader makes images in their own minds, supplies their own props, costumes, and camera angles, they may even ‘grow the size of their brains, or at least the complexity of its wiring.’ After all, unlike TikTok, the story will only come to life if the reader serves as camera man, costume designer, casting agent, and composer. ‘You don’t just sit back, watching a 34-second video jangle before your eyes. You are the influencer!’

Glover’s final sentence captures the power of his message and the magic offered by writers such as Charles Dickens, George Orwell, and Leo Tolstoy: ‘When I think about what fiction has given me, I dream of people coming to it anew – and seeing it, newly created, a light so easily turned on, beaming into the dark valleys in which Big Tech would have us huddle.’ I couldn’t agree more. And given the recent publication of our state and national NAPLAN results, the possibility of our young people ‘coming to it anew’ is sadly under threat.

Clare Murphy

English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach