Literature and the Web

We were all looking at the Hummingbird webcam yesterday.  Andy told me about seeing it on his brother David’s blog, and then I passed it on to my sister and mother.  It’s a tiny camera aimed at hummingbird nest in a rosebush in Orange County, California.

What is  more real and engaging than a real time image of a California hummingbird sitting on her nest, chasing off a marauding gecko, spearing and disposing of a non-viable egg?  Real reality, happening now, and a crowd of chat commenting on the hummingbird’s little life.

Of course the production values aren’t all they could be with the shaking rosebush making the nest waver, and suspense isn’t built up very well: suddenly there’s the lizard, in the corner of the screen, and then the hummer’s shadow, then the lizard’s gone.  The hummer’s needle nose appears, and the bad egg is gone.

But thousands of us are following this real reality show.  It’s lots of fun, and a healthy use of technology, of course.

So what’s the connection to novels and stories?  Personally, I’ve always read at least partly to learn about living.  What can a writer offer that the Phoebe webcam doesn’t? What do written stories do that Phoebe the hummingbird’s webcam doesn’t do?

Writers shape reality of course– not that the webcam by its very choice of angle and subject doesn’t shape reality too.   But stories , in my opinion, have a richer context and more connections– a web of relationships in many dimensions.  We have, by telling the story in that bland concatenation of symbols that is the written word, the advantage of igniting the reader’s imagination, we hope, so that the reader, not overwhelmed by the realness of the experience (as we often are with visual media like the movies) is allowed to make even more connections.

Clearly the people watching the hummingbird are identifying with it–anthropomorphizing and giving personality as if it were a Disney character.  This is probably a mistake.  In novels and stories, we are required to participate in the building of the work.  The hummingbird doesn’t need watchers;  the story needs its reader.