"Where the hell is the fun?" - Boodmark Now

It's funny, reading Kevin Smokler's Bookmark Now Introduction and his commentary on literature's reputation and public image as being CSPAN and hushed library readings, got me thinking: After seeing Columbia's AWP Literary Rock 'n Roll "Concert" I noticed how much we were a part of this literary revolution and how we're not only re-defining and re-thinking the writer's process (story workshop) but the portrayal of the writer.

There probably couldn't be better grounds to test out this new radical side of literature that Smokler discusses. 

And there's this part where Smokler envisions a world where lendable books line hotel lobbies, bus stations, coffee shops, and subway platforms, that made me melt a little inside. "How soon," he writes "before readers feel the same attachment to their favorite writers and books as they do to their favorite bands?"

He's right. It's time to stop looking at the recent spike in technology- internet, videogames, television- as the death of literature. Literature, as he displayed, surely has a place in the virtual world and it's about time we start taking advantage of it. If anything, this is our avenue, our ticket to that every-writer's-dream he described. We just need to get on the bandwagon.

Andi White