Updike's dictum

WARNING: NOT A POEM!
Updike wrote "the printed books are meetings of two minds"

Philosophizing over
what a writer exclaimed
I lament over something else
that the publishing houses
now have changed the writing forever
due to the money issue.
Most of the modern American
literature is boring
due to the sameness of language,
so I still find that
other old world cultures
use different writing styles
and are pleasantly diverse.
Is Updike right?
Is the printed book the only medium?
Working in a library where we lend
different mediums of presenting literature,
audio, manga, dvds, we do not distinguish
between the ways our patrons employ
to get their enjoyment of storytelling.
Soon I suspect
we will all have
one unifying electronic book
- will it compare?
While I understand Updike's dictum
I may think that he was of the old.
It does not matter in what form,
but what does matter is
how the receiver's state of mind
captures the sender's message.
I suspect we have an overload of info -
sometimes difficult for modern wo/man
to just sit down
and read the written word.
Yet, never has so much been banged out
as in the electronic age.
Alas, maybe both the sender and the receiver
should take more time -
breathing in and out -
writing and reading -
and both minds would benefit.

(having said all this, I still enjoy
opening a book for the first time
and plunge myself into another world -
the smell and the typeface and paper's
feel takes me back to my school girl days
of yore when my world was young
and I was curious, just like Updike)